


Ten Years of Rey

by Articianne



Series: Ten [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Force Bond, Slow Burn, one chapter of dark...ish...rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 11
Words: 66,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Articianne/pseuds/Articianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a young girl on Jakku, nine years old and small, light. When Kylo Ren is sent, finally, on a mission to gather kyber crystals to make his new lightsaber, he stops on Jakku to fix his ship and comes across a girl who calls him Ben. He can’t help it that he sees inside her little blank mind and finds the small point of light lodged deep within her consciousness. “Bring her on board,” he tells the other Knights of Ren, and suddenly, he has a little girl from Jakku on his ship riding back to the First Order, a girl who has no family, a girl whom he will train himself.</p><p>This girl is Rey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Year 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing i've ever posted on ao3, and also the first thing i've posted that's star wars related. starts when rey's a child. and she's a kenobi. because why not.
> 
> also i've watched tfa, like, seven times, and i need to actually do something.

“Load them onto the ship. And don’t _drop_ them,” he says to the other Knights around him, one of whom seals the last shipment and, glaringly, sets it on the ramp. The others make a show of this, laughing and kicking their own boxes of kyber crystals onto the ramp before pulling them on board. They’re all rather young, perhaps a little younger than himself—eighteen, nineteen, all of them, whereas he’s just turned twenty and has the other six operating under his command. But, while he tries to act older than he is, the other Knights don’t quite care. _They’re_ not the ones who’ve earned their way to a new ‘saber, _they’re_ the ones who haul around staves, other double edged blades, sometimes needing nothing but a few blasters lying around on the cargo shuttle.

But, no, Kylo Ren himself is the one who finally—finally!—can put together his a lightsaber. (He tries very hard not to think of the one that he _could_ have had back at the Jedi School. It always brings him disdain and a headache.) Sure, he’s young, perhaps a little too young to manage it, but he’s already come so far, done so much—and he has so much yet to do. There are still _Jedi_ lurking around the galaxy. Jedi who, Kylo knows with a sneer, don’t deserve the power of the Force that lurk in them. Jedi like _Luke Skywalker,_ and the second Kylo's crafted his own lightsaber, the second he can leave—begin his mission for ridding the galaxy of Jedi. 

“Everything’s loaded,” says one of the Knights, lagging behind the others. “We should head back, unless Supreme Leader Snoke wanted something else.”

“All I need are the crystals, Vero,” Kylo says to the other Knight. Vero sniffs. “Let’s go. Those crystals are valuable. We don’t need the whole galaxy on our tail, knowing we have them.”

Another Knight comes down the ramp. If it isn’t for the way he hurries toward him, Kylo wouldn’t have sensed his worry. “What is it?” he snaps, and the other Knight halts, his hands wringing and pulling at his armor.

“There’s something wrong with the ventral deflector shield. We don’t know what it is, and we don’t have a skilled enough mechanic on here to know.”

“Where’s the nearest trade port?” They can't risk hauling all of this through space. Someone would have to look at it—the cargo Kylo and the Knights are hauling is too precious to risk in shuttle with a faulty shield. Though it’s irritating to have to deal with it, Kylo forces himself to be level-headed. It’s getting hard for him. He clenches and unclenches his fists. 

The reply is Jakku, and Kylo frowns. He’s barely heard of Jakku, but it's never escaped him how the Stormtroopers cringed when they were assigned there. Once, in the hallways on their base, Captain Hux had complained about a missing delivery shipment of blasters, which had later been found intercepted near Jakku and stolen for credits.

“Set a course for Jakku,” says Kylo. “Let’s get this over with, quickly. I’m not risking those kyber crystals.”

 

* * *

 

Jakku is brown all over, filled with sand and dry heat, and Kylo immediately hates it. It’s hot, coarse, with scarcely anything of value. The inside of the ship is tempered against the harsher outside conditions, but none of the Knights look thrilled to step outside of the shuttle. They take off their helmets and masks, ridding themselves of their black and grey cloaks, and Kylo himself stubbornly paces the lower deck of the shuttle, waiting.

“Approaching Niima Outpost,” calls one of the Knights as they descend from the control deck. “Who’s going out there to get someone to repair the shield?”

Kylo rises. “Stay on the ship and make sure no one takes the crystals. I’ll find someone myself. And don’t you dare touch them—Supreme Leader will know.”

One Knight, Vero, scoffs at him but says nothing otherwise. The others just wipe at their foreheads as beads form on their temples, dripping down their chins. Their heavy cloaks and armor are only meant for Starkiller Base and they’re unused to the dredged sun high in the sky of Jakku, and it's no better in the cramped cargo deck of the shuttle among the cases of kyber crystals and the stale scent of Stormtrooper sweat that plagued the deck from previous trips.

Kylo descends from the ramp several minutes later and finds it immediately worse outside the shuttle in the burning sand. Jakku is a planet composed of nothing but sand, sand, sand, and Kylo wants nothing more than to head back to the base. But if they run across any pests on their way back, Kylo _knows_ that losing a single crystal will invite a whole day's worth of pain from his master, so he storms off toward Niima Outpost a few hundred meters away.

The junkyard port is full of lifeforms Kylo doesn’t want to deal with. As he stalks through it, he gets numerous stares, some bemused, some a bit scared—some even eye his mask with interest, as though inspecting it, wanting to take it apart. Sure enough, he soon realizes that he sticks out—horribly—among this wretched place on this wretched planet, in his dark garb and masked face. And, despite the tatters on the ends of his cloak, he’s clean. Too clean.

“I need a shield,” he says sharply to one of the traders, a Melitto who breathes heavily in response. “Where can I get one?”

The Melitto makes a noise and shoos him away, breathing something about _Unkar,_ and Kylo fights the urge to turn over the damn trader’s booth. _Damn shield,_ he thinks bitterly to himself. _I_ _could’ve been well on my way to finishing my ‘saber._ Where on this miserable planet  _was_ this Unkar?

But after several long minutes, Kylo learns that Unkar—rather, Unkar Plutt—is not hard to find. Actually, he’s horribly _easy_ to find, and Kylo averts his eyes from the Crolute and the layers of lard that coat his body. Unkar Plutt is a junkboss, the likes of which Kylo would personally _not_ want to deal with, but the likes of whom he has to, and Kylo’s irritation spikes as he sees the line trailing from Unkar’s sheltered shack. A bead of sweat trails between his shoulders under his tunic. Kylo straightens and, uncaring who or what is waiting for their turn, cuts into the front of the line and kicks sand away from his boots.

There’s an indignant, high-pitched  _“Hey!”_ behind him, but he doesn’t care, and apparently, neither does Unkar Plutt. “I need a deflector shield for my shuttle. The main ventral one's malfunctioned,” he says, raising a gloved hand and pointing out of the shelter toward his ship, which is half a mile away. “Something that works—I don’t care what—with that ship down there. Have someone come look at it.”

Unkar’s nonexistent brows rise at the sound of Kylo’s masked voice. He _hmm_ s to himself, the great fat beast. Something is tugging on Kylo’s cloak and he shakes it off, unconcerned, adding to Unkar, “I’ll pay, of course.”

Ugly, gross Unkar wrinkles his large nose in thought. “Oh? If you’ll pay . . . you will need to find a proper shield. . . .”

The tugging starts on Kylo’s cloak again. Kylo snarls and twists around, expecting a droid, a Kyuzo, _something_ other than what greets him.

What does greet him is a little girl whose hand is wrapped so tightly around his cloak her knuckles have gone white. She’s shaking his heavy cloak with a furious frown and grit of her teeth, glaring at him with squinted eyes. And, most surprisingly, she has a large bag trailing from her left hand which clinks as she tugs on his clothing.

He wrenches his cloak out of her small hand and she huffs again. “Keep your hands off me,” he says, and at the moment he’s so frustrated he thinks he might just turn the whole place up in fire. Why can't he just blast the whole place down and get back to base?

“You _cut_ me,” she cries, the little rat. “I was in line first! Don’t you know you can’t cut in line? I’ve been here for a whole quarter hour and I want my portions! You can’t cut lines! _Move!_ ”

The need to blast all of Niima Outpost dissipates as Kylo opens his mouth, closes it, stares at the little girl who has her hair tied in three buns, one, two, three—they line the back of her head before the third and largest rests against the collar of her tunic. Is this what it’s come to, then? He’s being reprimanded by a girl who is, perhaps, barely half his age? Probably younger? A moment passes as he struggles to say something. It only occurs to him a second too late that he’s wearing his mask and the girl has no idea what he’s doing behind it.

She pushes past him with a very audible _HMPH_ and bends down to her bag, pulling various parts (fuel pump, droid lenses, radios, the like) out of it and reaching up on her toes to put them on Unkar’s booth. Suddenly humiliated, Kylo steps aside and pulls her bag up onto the booth just as she reaches down to get another part.

He scours through the bag as she tries to pull his hands away, but he’s way too tall and she’s far too short. “Surely you have some sort of shield in here, little scavenger,” he tells her as she hangs off his arm. What a damn pest. “You must know what you’re doing to have gotten all this.”

“ _All that_ took me three weeks! And what are you _talking_ about, a shield? If I found a shield I'd have portions for a whole month!” she snaps. She turns to Unkar then, obviously having done whatever she's currently doing before. “How much do I get for these, Unkar? I’ve run out of my portions two days ago. . . .”

Kylo has no idea what the portions are, but he thinks, perhaps, it might be some form of money. He pours the other parts out from the bag and onto the booth, looking through them, seeing if he recognizes their form. Unkar Plutt takes one of the parts and turns it over in his hands. Then his eyes move from each part on the booth to the others as Kylo looks through them and puts them aside. “Two and a half portions,” says the Crolute as Kylo notes in frustration that there’s nothing he recognizes in the parts on the booth.

The girl drops from Kylo’s arm and stands on her toes again, hands and fingers outstretched, waiting for something. Unkar disappears from the booth for a second before he reemerges with several packets in his hands. The girl takes them and shoves them into the sack around her shoulder, as though she's afraid she'll lose them, but—for the briefest moment—Kylo sees the portions. Portions of rations. Rations. Of food.

This girl had gone without food for two days.

She wanders away, the empty bag trailing on the ground behind her.

“Never mind about the shield,” he tells Unkar Plutt. “I’ll find one myself.” And he leaves Unkar Plutt grumbling in his booth as the line moves forward.

The girl is wandering through the trading booths, moving as though she knows exactly what she’s doing. Kylo follows her halfway out of annoyance, halfway out of curiosity, and he’s even more irritated that he’s curious about her. She’s heading somewhere in a short trot, her eyes set forward, not needing to look at her surroundings. She’s used to this life, the life of a scavenger.

Kylo is sure she’d appreciate some amount of food.

It takes no effort for him to catch up to her quick steps—his legs are long enough to cover five of her minuscule ones, and in a matter of seconds, he’s got her cut off and she runs straight into his stomach.

The girl stumbles away and peers up through the sun to see him staring down at her through his helmet. “What?” she demands, shaking baby hairs from her forehead. “I’ve got things to do, y’know. Parts to get. Food to eat!”

“I need a shield,” he tells her. The voice that comes through his mask doesn’t faze her in the slightest.

“I don’t have one. You think I was lying? If I _did,_ I'd have portions for a month.”

Kylo crouches down so he’ll be level with her eyes, though she can’t see his. “You see the ship in the distance? I need a working shield. I need it _quickly,_ scavenger,” he adds as her eyes trace his ship half a mile away.

“Unkar’s probably got three or four,” she says. “You should’ve just paid him for one.”

His lips barely quirk behind his mask. At least she knows who has what here in this junkyard post on this wasted planet. “But you know which one he has is the best. _You_ won’t waste my time and give me something cheap.” He adds something in his words—a little push, a little meaning, a little Force. Only a little.

He can’t tell if it works on the girl, though, because she says, “Yeah, I know which are pretty good, but I’ve only been scavenging for a couple years.” She frowns at him. “ _And_ I won’t do it for free.”

“Of course not,” he agrees. “No, little scavenger, you’ll get twenty times more than what Unkar Plutt will ever give you.”

Her eyes light up and, without another word, she leads him back to Unkar Plutt’s booth.

 

* * *

 

Distracting Unkar Plutt is easy. Kylo doesn’t even have to use the Force to keep him occupied. Unkar pulls out a couple of shields, all of them rusted, large, and faulty, trying to sell them to Kylo as shields that will last his way back to Starkiller and more.

“I’m not spending that much on it,” snaps Kylo as he stares at the lumbering, fat Unkar Plutt. “Surely you have something that won't go down the moment a particle hits the shuttle. I’ve been on this awful desert planet for an hour, already, and I can’t have you wasting my time with this.”

Unkar Plutt grumbles at him as he reaches down below the booth and acts like he's looking for another one. A movement behind the great big ball of slimy lard makes Kylo’s lips upturn slightly in appreciation. With Unkar still mulling around his shack, the shoddy deflector shields still sitting on top of his booth, he’s distracted enough not to notice the girl disappearing into the shelves in the back of his miserable hideout before running out. “This is the best one I have that will fit with your Lamba shuttle,” says Unkar Plutt. “All or nothing.”

“Waste of my time,” snarls Kylo. “It looks as if it’ll fall apart in my hands. Forget it, I’ll make do with a mechanic, someone who knows what to do.”

Unkar makes a heavy noise in his stomach. Kylo turns away and hears the shack’s booth door slide closed. There’s another tug on his cloak and he looks down to see the girl with a huge grin on her face.

She flashes him a small glimpse of a similar shield in her large sack, newer, relatively untouched. One Unkar Plutt would never bother selling. He crouches down again, flips the fabric of her sack over it to cover the shield, and says, “Good. Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

They reach the ship, finally, and Kylo thankfully notes that none of the other Knights are sitting in the cockpit, but it doesn't matter much, because the girl takes things into her own hands. She’s only nine, but more knowledgeable about ships than he thinks he’ll ever be, and he tells her, “Fix it and you’ll have your food.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice. A small tongue pushes from between her lips as she works on replacing the shield. He stands, watches, if only for the fact that she’s a child and she might actually do more harm than good. For all he knows, she could’ve stolen the earlier bag of parts like she’d done with the fuel pump. Every once in a while her footing threatens to slip and she nearly falls back into the large pilot chair, but straightens herself out and gets right back to work.

But it’s clear five minutes in that she knows her way, at least in a basic sense, around a ship. Kylo feels himself relax as she works on replacing the deflector shield. Her small hands aren’t quite able to manage all the tasks before her, and so he finds himself having to hold parts steady as she clinks them together.

“And _this,_ ” she says triumphantly, “plugs straight back into the concussion shield . . . right there.” Her hands drop to her sides as she looks at her work. “All done, I think. You should test it out.”

As he leads her away from the upper deck and outside the shuttle, he notes her arms and tunic are covered with grease and oil. She looks at him after a moment, frowning at his mask and heavy cloak through the blazing daylight. “Where d’you come from?” she demands. “You’re definitely not from Jakku. Not if you’ve got a working ship. . . .” She looks envious all at once. “What’s your name?”

The scavenger’s just a little girl, a nobody from this wasteland. It wouldn’t hurt. “Ren,” Kylo tells her, opting for the name everyone formally calls him. Though the second he says it, there’s a noise from the ship and the sound of the boarding ramp opening.

The girl, though, tilts her head to the side, and says, “Ben. . . ?”

“N- _no_ _,_ ” says Kylo suddenly, through gritted teeth, because that’s _not_ his name, not at all, damn her. “No, it’s _not_ —”

But the girl's eyes have glazed over, as though seeing him differently. Her hands twitch. Her lips tremble. “It sounds familiar,” she says, not listening to him as his breathing starts to go haywire, and at once, her eyes are wide, her hands are grasping at his cloak for the third time that day. “Do you—do you know my family? Do you know them? Do you know if—”

“My name is _not_ Ben!” Kylo pulls her off his clothes and drops her into the sand. “My name isn’t Ben—how dare you, you little scavenger scum?”

The girl scowls at him, the marvel of it fading away. "It’s not a big deal. Fine, your name isn’t Ben. Why are you so—”

But his mind is in hyperdrive, now, and he can hear the other Knights behind him coming out of the ship. She knows his name, she called him Ben, how dare she? She knows too much, and he can’t let her remember this, remember any of it. He’ll give her her food. He’ll give her what she needs, but suddenly he hates this little scavenger who called him Ben, because can’t she see it? He’s not _Ben._ There’s no way, she knows too _much_ —

He raises one hand and crouches toward her, and suddenly she shrinks back. “Wh-what are you doing?” she says, scuffling back against the sand. Her hands are red from the contact to the ground. The sand is too hot, too unbearable. “Don’t—stop it!”

“You will forget this,” he says, and at once every ounce of the Force is behind him out of his fury. _His name isn't Ben!_  “You will forget this day. You will forget fixing this foreign ship’s ventral deflector shield. You will forget seeing me and my Knights on Jakku. You will take your food and go back to Niima Outpost, and you will not speak a word of what happened here.”

And he reaches for her mind, stretching her memories open, memories of only a couple years past, a ship rocketing toward the blue sky above Jakku, a voice screaming for the ship to come back, blurred memories of parents and the spirit of a withering, faintly recognizable old man who fades in and out of her memory—and then a barrier, and suddenly she’s _screaming_ at him, telling him to get out of her head, that she won’t do it, and then he sees the pulse of light in the deepest part of her mind.

He gasps, withdrawing, sees her with tears staining her small cheeks. “I don’t want it,” she wails, pushing herself from the ground. “I don’t want the food—I don’t want any of it, not from _you,_ you  _monster_!”

The other Knights behind him, Kylo feels, are shock silent. Kylo himself raises shaking hands to his mask, feeling too confined, too confused. The girl stumbles and her teardrops make wet blotches on the sand beneath her feet. “Go away!” she screams at him. “Go away!”

 “You—” He can’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t know what to say. How could there be a someone such as she, a little scavenger girl, with the power of the Force like _that_ , here on Jakku? Did he miss something? Did he—

She’s still crying, screaming, doing something in between; she gathers her sack in her arms and stumbles through the sand, her feet sinking as she stomps past them, and Kylo has to physically shake away the sensation of power she left in his mind. “Get back on the ship!” he commands the Knights, barely able to withhold the shakiness in his voice. “Mind the crystals. _Do not leave_!”

They clamber back onto the ramp, looking just as stunned as Kylo feels, and Kylo has a quick decision to make. A _very_ quick decision. He knows instantly what he has to do and why he has to do it. He raises his hand and freezes the girl in place, moving in front of her, his cloak billowing around the sand as he does.

She stops, dropping the sack onto the sand. Her small body shudders with the Force holding her in place. Kylo purses his lips in effort as he holds it over her—he hasn’t had much practice with this trick yet, but he’s glad he knows it enough for this. “Look at me,” he orders as her wide eyes dart away from his mask. “Look at me, scavenger.”

She doesn’t look at him. She shuts her eyes, wrinkling her nose in effort to pull out of his grip.

Clearly, this person with the mask over his face does not have the trust of the young child in front of him. Kylo slowly pushes his hood down and feels for the edges of his mask, hoping that the face beneath will calm her slightly. A human face, one that looks like her own—one that, perhaps, she can read. He unlatches his mask and feels the hot air of the desert fill his space in front of his jaw. A moment later, his mask is off and his helmet is in his arms. “Look at me,” he repeats, leaning forward, voice soft.

At the sound of his unfiltered, non-distorted voice, the girl freezes and her eyes shoot open. He sees the girl’s eyes clearly now. Wide, a tinge of green in an otherwise grey-brown pair of irises, and observant despite her fear. She says nothing, swallowing, but Kylo takes the chance anyway. He releases her from the Force hold and says, “Do not run. I’m not going to hurt you.”

Still, she says nothing, but instead glares at him so sourly he has to catch himself.

“What is your name?”

“I won’t—I won’t tell you,” she says stubbornly, though she ends up holding up a hand to block out the sun from behind his head. He moves over slightly, effectively casting his shadow over her eyes. She drops her arm and scowls.

“Tell me your name,” says Kylo. “You have a great power in you. You’re untrained, but you have such potential . . . I can help you tame that power.”

“I can’t leave Jakku!” she says to him, and her eyes well with tears. “I can’t leave. Not with anyone, and not with you."

"Is it that ship I saw in your mind?" he says, his head cocking to the side ever so slightly, and a tear trails down her left cheek. "Are you waiting for someone? Family, perhaps?"  _Why waste your time with family, girl?_

"They'll be back," she says shakily. "They will. They have to."

This scavenger, this girl who only comes up to his stomach, is stranded on a desert wasteland without a family and only a sack to her name. This scavenger, this girl whose name he does not yet know, is without food and has been for the past two days. This scavenger, this girl who is in front of him with red eyes, a stuffed nose, and a sore voice, is Force sensitive and completely ignorant of it.

He has to do it, though. He can’t let her stay here, can’t let her grow on a world with nothing—can’t let that wretched _Resistance_ find her when he already has. “I’ve seen them,” he says, and her wide eyes go wider. “I’ve seen them, in your mind . . . I can help you find your family, if you come with me.”

“You can find. . . .” A small laugh escapes her, tiny, almost inaudible. She’s more breathless and shaky, but his words have ignited something. “You—you know them? You can . . . you’ll help me?”

“If you help _me,_ ” he tells her. “We will both be helping each other. You can learn so much. You can see your family again if you spend your time training with me.”

“Do you promise?” she says, her voice hoarse from her earlier screams.

He’ll promise anything if this girl comes with him and leaves this life behind. If she’ll become his student, his padawan, so the Resistance can’t have her. “I promise,” he says.

The girl’s lips stretch over white, small teeth. He notices one is missing and a larger tooth is growing in. A child, this child he thought was a pest. This child on this desert planet is Force sensitive. She’ll be training with him. He can hardly believe it when she nods her head, when she asks if she can just take some things she has back at Niima outpost, when she pulls him along to come with her. He can hardly believe it, that he found such a child to train. . . .

Kylo thinks to himself that he might, perhaps, impress Supreme Leader Snoke when he gets back to Starkiller Base.

 

* * *

 

“What a find,” says one of the Knights. “What a kid. Hope she doesn’t scream all the way back.”

“You’ll act toward her with utmost respect,” Kylo says, and the Knight stutters for a moment. “She will be my student when she is old enough to control the Force within her. It will take time, but she’s a guest.” No, that’s the wrong word for her. “She’s one of us. Understood?”

“A Knight?”

“If she wants,” says Kylo, and he thinks to the girl, who he feels arranges her sparse belongings within her large sack in the lower deck of the T-4a shuttle. She’d grabbed some sort of helmet, a canteen, and a number of rusted tech parts that he’d seen her put together before he left to secure the kyber crystals. He has no idea what she brought along with her, but he thinks it can’t matter too much. There’s a weird giddiness in him. He’s going to have his own apprentice, someone to train _himself,_ someone who will look up to him—appreciate him—maybe even—

He shakes himself out of it. “She can be whatever Supreme Leader wants her to be,” he says. “Whatever she wants to be. It doesn’t matter. She’s with us, now.”

Kylo tells Vero and the other pilot Knight to start them back to Starkiller Base before descending from the upper deck of the shuttle and unlatching his mask from his face. The hyperdrive lurches them space as he finds the girl in the cargo deck in the corner with her belongings spread around her. The other Knights are sitting far away, quiet. “Hi,” she says to Kylo, her eyes alight, her hands splayed over a small worn keypad.

Once more, he crouches in front of her, making sure his mask is to his side, that she can see his face. “What are you doing, scavenger?”

“You don’t have to call me that, you know,” she says, her head bowing down again as she clicks against the keypad. “I’m a scavenger, but my name is Rey.”

Rey . . . her name is Rey. The girl’s name is Rey, this little scavenger from the desert, the little nobody child. The girl with the talent of taming the Force deep in her mind, covered in light—and her name is Rey. His little apprentice. Rey. Her name is Rey.

 _How fitting,_ he thinks, and the thought runs through his head naturally until he feels his brow draw into a frown. Fitting because . . . because why? Rey. . . .

“And you’re . . . Ren,” she says, _carefully,_ and he exhales despite himself.

“Kylo Ren, to be precise.” Her mouth forms into an ‘o’. She tries it out on her tongue, before she decides calling him “Ren” will be enough, and she hopes “Rey” is enough for him.

“You don’t know your family name at all?” he asks her.

She shakes her head.

“You will,” he says. “It might take a while, but you’ll know.”

She gives him a smile as bright as the sun.

 

* * *

 

Rey doesn’t meet Supreme Leader Snoke when she gets there, and she won’t until she’s old enough to start training. At least, that’s what Kylo himself is told. Supreme Leader Snoke will test her from a distance, will inspect her abilities and teach her from afar—but until then, she will not train. She’ll simply spend time learning about the First Order. Learning about herself, her abilities . . . spending time with Kylo. . . .

She seems to have no qualms when he says she can’t start training just yet. She is content to follow him around like a pet, happy to receive full rations of food, excited to see the technicians around the base doing repairs in the hallways. It gets a bit frustrating, having her follow him around so much, but he isn’t complaining, not when Supreme Leader is so impressed with him, not when he is finally, _finally_ able to make his lightsaber.

They have no specific place for her yet. She sleeps in a guarded room down the hall from Kylo. She can’t sleep with the other children on the base—she’s too special for that, handpicked from the wastelands of Jakku by Kylo himself. So she sleeps in some makeshift room, but a room nonetheless, and it has no sand, and it’s lit at night, and she gets food, and she’s happy.

Sometimes, at night, Kylo can feel the Force—awakened a bit within her when he’d tried to trick her on Jakku—whisper to him as she dreams in her room. Little innocent dreams that keep him up sometimes as he meditates on the kyber crystals in front of him. Dreams of an island in the middle of an ocean. Dreams of faceless parents, faces that vanish the older she gets. Dreams of a spirit of a man whose face she can no longer see, who whispers in her mind. “These are your first steps,” says the spirit, and it’s the only thing that remains in her dreams even when the man is no longer recognizable. _These are your first steps. These are your first steps._

The little scavenger remembers none of it in the morning. What she does in her spare time is fiddle with the parts she’d brought from Jakku, which he later learns is a flight simulator she tries to put together herself. He offers a real one for her to work with, but she only ignores him, that little tongue poking out from her mouth in thought as she latches the parts together and tries to get them to work.

Each night, the Force beckons to him a little stronger. A little brighter, like a star in the night. Kylo thinks, in a year, she might be ready to take her first steps.


	2. Year 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren is twenty-one. Rey is ten.

His little scavenger turns ten when he isn’t on Starkiller Base. He’s on a mission again; he hadn’t known she would be celebrating her birthday while he was gone until she mentions it just as he leaves his quarters. She asks if, perhaps, he’ll be back in time for her to show him the flight simulator she _finally_ finished making with the parts she scavenged back on Jakku, but he knows he won’t be back in time. “Let’s hold off until I get back” is the only thing he can say as her eyes remain glued on the lightsaber in his belt. Even though he knows she wants to ask about it—how he put it together or, rather, where he found the parts—she instead says, “You’ll come back, right?”

Kylo looks at her for a long time, before he nods, his eyebrows drawing together as if to reassure her. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll come back.”

She smiles, then, cheeks dimpling at him as she waves, and he loses sight of her as he turns the corner—but he can feel the soft, soft waves of the Force even as he boards his ship. He doesn’t know it, but Rey watches his ship fly off into Starkiller’s sky, hoping desperately that the same ship will return soon.

Kylo himself cannot afford distractions on this mission. He’s received a tip for Luke Skywalker’s location from a source in the Outer Rim and, disregarding the rest of the Knights of Ren as they tell him he’s an idiot to only take a few Stormtroopers, he sets off to locate the source. If the information is wrong, the source will pay, of course—if the information is right, then Ren will be one step closer. The source will still have to pay. He can’t risk that information getting out to others.

One look at the ‘saber in his belt is enough to make his chest swell with pride. _Do you see me, Grandfather?_ He pulls it out, turning it over in the light of the main cabin in the ship. _I finally have it. My own lightsaber. Though—_ he turns it on here— _it still doesn’t quite feel right. I don’t think I’ve gotten the hang of it yet._

Kylo looks at the simple design of it. It really is simple. The plasma blade is annoyingly bland, even though he’d built his lightsaber with the kyber crystal that had called out to him the most. It casts a steady glow of red against the walls. A couple seconds later and he's sick of looking at it. He lets the blade retreat into the hilt before he tucks it back into his belt. _I’ll make a better one, Grandfather,_ he promises inwardly.

He gets to the Outer Rim and dispatches Stormtroopers as they approach Baroonda, a rather large mess of a planet that he really doesn’t like. The source is in Baroo, the largest city on the planet, and suddenly he’s wrought with terror. There are too many lifeforms in this city, too many who can overhear. How many know? What if the intelligence from the source is already widespread? Can he face an entire city? Him, several Stormtroopers, and a lightsaber he halfway doesn’t trust?

Somehow, calm fills him as the ramp on his shuttle descends when they land. There is a light calling to him across the galaxy, though he doesn’t know how and why, but his hand stills over the lightsaber tucked in his belt and he makes his way off his ship.

The source is a Majan with skin as dark as the trees outside. She works at one of the medbays in Baroo and he finds her filling several bacta tanks. “I am lucky,” she says, standing tall and wiping her hands against her thighs. “I never thought my information would grant me a visit from the Jedi Killer himself so soon.”

“Tell me what you know,” he says.

 

* * *

 

The source paid very well, serving as Kylo Ren’s first true test of his new lightsaber. He still doesn’t like the feel of it, even though he’s _sure_ the kyber crystal he chose was the one that called to him the most while he meditated with them. He climbs back aboard his shuttle and barks orders at the Stormtroopers before moving to the main cabin and pulling his ‘saber back out, eyes darting at its smooth indentations, its simple appearance. It doesn’t resonate with him at all. What a waste!

His fingers clench around his ‘saber and he attempts to regulate his breathing, find some sort of calm in the crystal he chose, but it doesn’t work. The veins in his hands pulse with the effort as he loses feeling with how hard of a grip he has around his weapon. But the crystal, instead of making him feel at ease, calm like he should be, makes him _hate_ it—it’s too Jedi, too _Luke Skywalker._

Kylo lets the plasma blade run free from the hilt and, with a roar, he cuts at the durasteel in front of him. He does it over and over, trying to tear it apart, trying to feel what he’s supposed to feel through the kyber, but it doesn’t work. It never seems to work.

He pulls the plasma blade back in and, irrationally, lets out another yell. He hates Luke Skywalker. The ‘saber drops to the floor beside him. He braces himself against the wall with a forearm, heaving, angry and unsure and wanting to break his damned lightsaber in half.

But then the overwhelming urge to cry fills him and he has no idea, _no idea,_ where it’s come from. He shuts his eyes behind his mask and makes an arduous effort against the tears, except this is something Supreme Leader _never_ told him about, this horrible inexplicable feeling of—of sadness. It is his own loneliness which he hadn’t wholly experienced in a year, now, but it is _doubled_ in its grief, raw, aching, childlike pain.

Kylo’s eyes snap open as he realizes it. For a moment, he is on Starkiller Base, staring out into the grey sky. Then the Force wraps around him and he is back in the main cabin of his shuttle, his vision swimming with the effort to pull away from a small body halfway across the galaxy.

 _Rey,_ he thinks, at first furious with her, the way she’s untamed and weak—the way she doesn’t know she’s using the Force, but then the animosity vanishes and he wills himself to calm down. It’s a trying task, but he can’t risk it—he had felt her loneliness, her sadness, and suffice it to say, she might’ve been reacting to his anger with her tears. He needs her compliance, and for that, he must be calm, at least while she is still a child.

The cabin’s bench creaks slightly as he lowers himself down to it and does his best to meditate. Ten minutes pass and he hopes the calm that has filled him has traveled halfway across the galaxy to reach her, as well.

 

* * *

 

The day of Rey’s birthday is one that fills Kylo with subtle dour. And he knows it isn’t from him. The same childlike feeling accompanies him throughout the day. He hates it, but Kylo tells himself that the second he gets back to Starkiller Base, he won’t have to deal with it anymore. He also suspects that she’ll be old enough to start training with him and Supreme Leader Snoke.

 _That_ is one of the more exciting things he feels as he heads back. He’s been gone a long while, several months at this point, and today the ache of loneliness is heavier in his chest that it normally is. Somedays, it’s worse. Worse especially when Kylo had found out that the information from the source on Baroonda was false. It’s awful when Kylo is angry, because then the sorrow seeps into him like a poison. It makes him throw his wretched ‘saber to the side and meditate until the pain has subsided enough for him to concentrate.

For Rey’s sake, though, Kylo attempts calm on her birthday. He knows it’s her birthday because of the bubbling excitement in his stomach and the pang heaving his lungs. Dealing with it is a burden, but he needs her trust, so he locks himself in a room so as not to deal with petty concerns. Thankfully, Stormtroopers and pilots alike know not to cross paths with Kylo. It makes his job that much easier.

He meditates on his lightsaber, the damn thing. He feels for the crystal and notes the small indentations on it, the dents in the hilt, all from his misuse of the horrible thing. Dropping it, throwing it, all of the times when he’d rather scream and rage but _can’t_ because of Rey—the lightsaber has dealt with its toll, yet Kylo still hates the thing.

Rey’s birthday comes and goes, and she’s ten, and she’s even lonelier than before. He’s closer to her now—he’ll be on Starkiller Base the next day after fulfilling various other tasks for Supreme Leader—and her unadulterated aches from her isolation reach him in stronger waves.

He hates it.

 

* * *

 

The moment his shuttle—the telltale design for his ship, with its ion engines and _Upsilon-_ class model, is very noticeable—breaks through the clouds on Starkiller Base, he feels something swell around him and, for the first time in a long time, the loneliness in his chest melts away.

Down on the ground, peering out from the window of her makeshift room, is the little scavenger, cheeks pressed to her tiny window, standing on her toes on the number of crates that tower next to her cot. She leaps down from the window and tries not to yell in joy, but the grin on her lips threatens to split her face in two; he’s back, he’s back, he’s back—he had told her he would be back, and he _is,_ and she can show him her new simulator, _finally_ , she’s so happy.

She had spent the time separated with him in bewilderment, feeling inexplicable rage and reacting to it with sorrow. She had played through her raggedly-made simulator until she could practically play through it in her sleep. She hadn’t been able to explore the base, and if she did, it was only to see the Knights of Ren who treated her with awkward kindness and silence and the occasional offer to watch them train. So she’s _happy_ that Ren is back, so happy, because now maybe she can train and he’ll play her simulator with her and he can help her find her family.

Rey rips the door to her room open and makes to tear down the hall; a hand on the back of her tunic catches her and pulls her back. “Hey!” says the Stormtrooper. “You’ve got to stay in your room. You have a curfew!”

“Ren’s back,” she huffs at him. Stupid bucket-head. “I’m gonna go see him! You can’t keep me in my room now that he’s back, you know!”

“Look, _scavenger_ —”

“It’s _Rey_ ,” she says, and she stomps on his boot before pulling out of his grip. “I can go find Ren myself or one of you will take me!”

The other Stormtrooper guarding her door says, “You have an assigned curfew. We can’t let you leave.”

Just as Rey opens her mouth to give him a stern talking-to, a hurried click of boots sounds behind her. She whips around, hoping to see _Ren_  in his billowing cloak, angry footsteps banging down the hall. Instead, it’s a tall man with bright orange hair, looking as if he smelled something very sour. “Kylo Ren is back,” he says to the Stormtroopers. “He wants the girl. Now!”

“Yes, sir,” and they let her go, and she’s practically skipping alongside this tall man whose nose seems to be slightly upturned all the time.

“You know Ren?” she asks him when they’ve turned a corner. The man makes a noise in the back of his throat and casts an annoyed blue eye on her. He doesn’t respond otherwise. Undeterred—she’s so happy, Ren is back, nothing can faze her!—Rey adds, “Do you like him? He needs some friends, you know.”

“Oh yes,” says the man, and even Rey can tell that sarcasm is dripping from every pore in his pale face, “Ren is one of my favorite people on this whole base.”

She looks forward. “Don’t need to _pretend,_ y’know. Not many people like him, but I do. He has me!”

The man beside her, leading her to one of the many loading docks in the base, doesn’t reply at all this time. He holds one hand out in front of her and she runs straight into it as he suddenly halts. Ren’s ship is already docked and the ramp is already unlatched; Stormtroopers pour out of it, marching uniformly out of the dock, and only a few seconds later, Ren himself sweeps out of the ship.

“Ren!” exclaims Rey, pushing past the man’s arm. “You’re back! You came back!” She runs toward him, arms stretching outward as she nears him, ready to wrap around his stomach—he’s real, isn’t he?—but something changes. There’s a pressure on her mind, a warning, and it doesn’t _hurt,_ but it makes her slow down, makes her remember where she is. There are people staring. Stormtroopers who have turned their helmets toward her.

She drops her arms, suddenly ashamed as Ren takes slow steps in her direction. Behind her, she hears the other man approach, standing at her back. Rey tilts her head up at him and, for once, is thankful that Ren has his mask on so she can’t see his embarrassment with her. “Hello,” she says, suddenly quiet. “Welcome back.”

Ren doesn’t say anything. His mask turns to the man behind her instead. His voice, heavily filtered through his mask, does not comfort Rey as much as she’d like—she wants his real voice. “Major Hux,” says Ren as a form of greeting. “You’ve been promoted, I see.”

“That’s correct,” says the other man. “Supreme Leader Snoke would like to see you as soon as possible . . . after you finish reacquainting yourself, of course.”

Ren doesn’t say thank you, but Major Hux leaves anyway. As soon as he’s out of earshot, Rey mutters to herself about what a stuck-up and horribly acting man he is, but Ren hears her. “Follow me,” he says. Rey hates the mask again. She can’t hear whether or not Ren is angry with her.

Several minutes later, Ren is entering the key to his quarters and ushers her in. She’s never been inside it before, but she doesn’t like it much. It’s empty and boring. Even hers, which used to be a large storage room, has more personality than his does.

She sits on the floor and watches as he takes his mask off. He sets it aside, pulling his ‘saber out of his belt and dropping it beside his helmet. Rey’s eyes move to his face. His mouth is set in a hard line and he’s frowning.

“Are you mad with me?” she says quietly, hoping he will say he isn’t. But she can understand if he is. She doesn’t want him to decide she’s unworthy to train in whatever it is he wants to train her for. She doesn’t want to be deposited back on Jakku. She wants to find her family.

Ren pulls his cloak off and sighs, his eyes darting toward her before he tosses the cloak over his helmet and his lightsaber. “No,” he says, and the one word makes relief flow through her like the sunlight used to on Jakku. She slouches over in it, leaning against the wall. But then he says, “Stop _doing_ that.”

“Doing what?”

“That. All of it. Your emotions. I can feel it, all of it. It’s distracting.”

“You can’t _feel_ it,” she says, folding her arms over her chest. “They’re _mine._ I feel them, not you.”

Ren casts his eyes on her with a heavy draw of his brows. She shrugs. “I’m not doing anything different!”

He walks toward her, leveling himself with her forehead and brings one hand to her temple. “Relax,” he tells her. “It won’t be painful if you let me in.”

“What are you doing?” she questions as he lays a finger on her temple. There’s a pull to her consciousness—he wants her permission. “Are you trying to feel my emotions?”

“I can already feel them. I just want to know why.”

“That’s weird,” she says, but then she shuts her eyes and relaxes. He pulls gently at the edge of her mind and seeps through, a running grey shadow that flits behind her eyes and carefully inspects her rawest memories, her purest feelings. He pulls out sorrow she felt when she was in her room days at a time, the terror at being left behind on Jakku, the happiness she felt when his ship swept into the skies of Starkiller Base. He pulls out the rage she didn’t know she had on those random occasions when he was gone and, at once, she feels him recoil, and the moment is broken slightly. Tentatively, she imagines calm. A light she sees only when he is in her head, the light she first saw in the deepest parts of her mind when she first met him on Jakku.

The light moves through her consciousness and edges to where Ren has retreated, isolated, thinking—wondering. And suddenly, she sees Ren as a boy, Ren in a field, Ren watching a ship fly into the sky, Ren crying himself to sleep, Ren with a voice in a head that talks about _Darth Vader_ —

But he pushes back and suddenly her light is back in her own head. “Don’t,” he chokes out, removing his hand from her temple. “Don’t do that. You won’t understand it.”

“What was that?” she asks him, pushing herself up from the heels of her palms. “I saw you—you were like me! You were—”

“ _Don’t,_ Rey!” he snaps at her, and she shuts her mouth, glaring at him. She’s suddenly angry, very angry, almost like those times when he was gone—and then she realizes she can _feel_ him, and it’s painful.

“Don’t be angry,” she says to him, rising from the floor as he swiftly moves away, shrugging his cloak back on and picking up his helmet. “Please don’t be angry with me, Ren, I can feel it, too, I—”

“Then don’t feel it,” he says, his words harsh. “Block it out. Teach yourself, like I did. Until I know you’re ready to be trained, teach yourself to keep your emotions in your own head.” He shuts his eyes, breaths coming out in heavy punches of air. Then he puts the helmet on and his next words are filtered, his expression hidden from her. “You can teach yourself to do it.”

When he leaves—presumably to meet with Supreme Leader Snoke, the supposed all-powerful leader whom she has yet to meet—he seems to forget he’s left Rey by herself in his quarters. She kicks at the base of his bed. _He’s so dumb,_ she thinks to herself. _He can’t even keep his own feelings to himself!_

 

* * *

 

“I believe,” says Supreme Leader Snoke, “that your little scavenger is ready to begin her training.”

Pride and relief both fill Kylo’s body as he hears his master’s words. He keeps his face impassive, even behind the mask, but he’s excited for it. He’d been younger when he first started to train with _Luke Skywalker,_ but he’d known he was Force sensitive far earlier than Rey did. He supposes that the Force has awoken enough within her for her to begin controlling it.

“Supreme Leader, you will be pleased with her progress she has already made, despite being untrained,” he says. “She has raw power. The Force will bow to her beck and call as she ages. She—”

“—can read you, can she not?” his master interrupts. “And you can read her? I know all about how the Force can awaken in a young child’s mind, Kylo Ren. The likelihood that she has Bonded with you . . . _you_ awoke the Force in her mind, and you are connected. Can you read her thoughts?”

Bonded? He and his scavenger are Force Bonded? Kylo had hardly believed that to be possible—he hadn’t known he was the only one who could feel her emotions so vividly. “No,” he answers after a moment.

“But you can feel her observations . . . her reactions to the world.”

“I can feel her purest emotions,” says Kylo. “She feels in whole emotions all at once. Happiness, sadness, anger.”

“A child’s range of emotions,” agrees Supreme Leader Snoke. “She feels you, too, does she not?’

Kylo doesn’t want to reply to it. If he says yes, then he is weak. How can he let a _child_ read him like Rey does? If he says no, then will _she_ be weak? Will Snoke rescind his permission for Rey to begin training? “Yes,” he says, deciding that he must tell the truth, because his master will be able to sense it either way.

“Good, good. . . . Let her read you, Kylo Ren. She will become loyal to the First Order that way. Snuff out the light in her mind—cast your shadow on it and blow her out with your thoughts.”

The words bring unbidden images to Kylo’s mind. He knows he should “snuff out the light in her mind”—and Kylo knows that it'll be painful, because the only way to bring darkness is through pain. He's been through a lot of it as an apprentice himself. The hatred. The torture. . . .

Suffocation rips at his calmed thoughts, and suddenly the world is red and black, and his pain screams through his consciousness as his master begins to blow out his scavenger’s light.

 

* * *

 

Her world is hurting. Rey hates it.

She isn’t doing anything different. She’s sitting on Ren’s bed, bored out of her mind. She can’t leave—the door locks automatically after it is closed and requires a key to be opened from either side. Having occupied herself with everything in Ren’s room, she has nothing else to do but stare at the dark ceiling. In fact, she’s on the verge of sleep when the sharpest of pain runs through the back of her eyes. She sits up, gasping, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyelids and struggling not to cry.

It’s Ren, she knows it. How can he withstand pain such as this? What’s _happening_ to him? Emotions she can’t understand shoot through her, things she’s never felt before, like isolation, betrayal, agony, shame, and worst of all, acceptance, and she _hates_ it. How can he accept what’s happening to him? Why can’t he think like her, in simpler thoughts? Doesn’t he hurt? Why do there have to be parts to his pain? Parts belong in machines, not in people, and she _hates this._

Minutes pass and the pain snaps away, leaving a throbbing ache just behind her eyes. She blinks rapidly, the tears washing away on her cheeks, leaving embarrassing marks on his grey bedsheets. That was horrible, awful, despicable—she runs through every word she knows. Who treats Ren like that? Now she’s mad at them, whoever they are. Snoke, that disgusting creature. She’s furious with him! How can such a lifeform treat Ren so horribly?

“I know what I’ll do,” she says to absolutely no one in the room. She wishes there were a droid, something she could speak to, but the room is absolutely barren except for a cabinet and his bed. “We’ll test out my simulator, finally. He’ll be happy again. Or we can start training. I’m sure he’ll be happy about that.”

The door opens a quarter hour later and Ren walks in as if nothing has happened. At least, that’s what Rey thinks, until he stops when he sees her still on his bed. “Hello,” she says quietly when he seems to get over his surprise.

He turns away from her, unlatching the mask from his face. When it’s off, she sees that his cheeks and eyes are red. His hair is drenched in sweat. His jaw is clenched, as though the pain still rolls through his head. “I’d forgotten you were here,” he says as he sets it down.

“Couldn’t leave. What _was_ that?” she demands of him, unable to keep it to herself. “What happened to you? That was _awful,_ Ren! I—”

He closes in on her, looking at her closely. “You felt it, then? Yes?” he inquires, breathing heavily through his long nose. “You felt—all of it?”

“Of _course_ I did.” He’s such an idiot!

“That’s—that’s good,” he says, nodding to himself, pushing his wet hair from his eyes. “Good, good. We can work with that.”

“Work with—”

“We start your training tomorrow,” he tells her, and suddenly the world is bright again. Rey’s lips spread in a grin, because starting training means she’s one step closer to finding her family, and Ren is the best, and she’s so glad.

She wants to hug him, but then she remembers the moment at the dock only a couple hours earlier. “Thank you,” she says breathlessly, and she plops back down against his bed, staring at the ceiling, imagining everything she might learn. It must be exhilarating, learning to control the Force, something she’d only heard in myths and legends on Jakku. “Thank you!”

Then she remembers that he can probably feel everything she’s feeling. She doesn’t quite know how to squash it down, so she apologizes instead. “Sorry. I’d forgotten you can—”

“It’s alright,” he says, and she hears a small smile in his voice. Her happiness can make him happy, too, she supposes, and it makes her all the happier. “You’ll learn how to control it in time.”

It’s good that she’s going to learn that. She’s going to learn so much. She loves learning. It’s really the only thing she knows how to do. So when Ren tells her she should go back to her room to sleep and replenish her energy, she doesn’t argue—she has a lot to learn tomorrow.

She forgets all about asking him to play on the simulator.

 

* * *

 

The morning comes far too quickly for Kylo, who is aching and exhausted, and far too slowly for Rey, who is up all night from her eagerness. Kylo is ten times more irritable and he carries a dreary cloud over his shoulders as he runs through his routines with the Knights of Ren. They laugh at him when he forces them to set up their training room so he can bring Rey in.

“Barely an apprentice yourself, and you have your own, Ren?” says one, dropping his staff on the floor and spreading a mat over the durasteel. “Maybe we can each have our turn fighting her, hm?”

“You touch her, you deal with me,” snarls Kylo, the mask making his words spit through his mouth, and suddenly the Knight slams against the wall with the Force and keels over, coughing.

“G-get over yourself,” says the Knight. “You might be in command, but you’re still one of us until you finish your training.”

A moment later, the Knight is headed to the medicinal ward with bruised ribs and expletives on his tongue. Kylo tucks his ‘saber into his belt and spreads the mats himself—the mats that he didn’t end up destroying.

When he brings Rey in for her first training, she looks disappointed at the set-up of the room, but she still touches everything, observant as usual. “What are we doing today?” she asks, turning expectant eyes on him.

“Breathing,” he tells her.

“That sounds boring.”

“It’s a fundamental part to controlling the Force,” he says, loathe as he is to admit it. He doesn’t quite practice it much himself.

Rey looks thoughtful, her little bottom lip jutting out as she thinks about it. “Well,” she says, “if it’s important, then I need to do well at it!”

He feels a little envious of her, then. She’s so ready to learn the basics, while he had been too eager to learn the advanced routines. He’d been forced heavy-handedly to sit down and master the fundamentals. She readily accepts them.

Kylo figures it’s probably a result of having nothing but the necessities as a child.

When they sit down and get to it, she listens attentively as he tells her how to sit, how to clear her mind (as best he knows how to do), how to employ her breathing so the Force can move evenly within her as she lets the air fill and leave her lungs with ease. When she gets the hang of it within an hour, he breathes with her, guiding her along the process . . . knowing that it will make him stronger and, hopefully, impress Supreme Leader Snoke a little more.

Kylo feels the discomfort radiate off of her as another hour passes. In fact, he’s surprised she hasn’t said anything about it, hasn’t made a complaint or loosened her posture. Is this what growing up on Jakku does to children? Hardships on a desert wasteland such as Jakku must render this discomfort as a small issue in comparison.

But her discomfort grows by the minute. It’s making _him_ uncomfortable, so Kylo says, “We’ll stop it at here for today.”

He opens his eyes just as Rey does. She frowns at him. “That’s all?”

“For today,” he repeats.

“Alright.”

Kylo gets the impression she’d been expecting more. “We’ll do more tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow morning. Sleep early and wake early. It will make you more alert.”

She seems to have no problem with that, considering she used to rise before the sun did on Jakku. “Did I do alright?” she asks as she rolls the mats up while he decides to take the time to meditate on his lightsaber.

“Yes,” he says after a beat, “but you have a lot to learn. It won’t be easy.”

“I suppose not,” she says.

Unbeknownst to Kylo, she’s recalling the pain he had underwent the previous day, and her eagerness wanes slightly.

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, at night when Ren is asleep, Rey wakes in her own room with a jolt of pain. She has to stare out the window for it to fade. Sometimes she plays on her simulator. Sometimes she sits on her cot and tries to use her breathing techniques to help it go away. She wishes she knew what Ren thinks about, dreams about, but she knows he’ll never tell her. Some nights, she can’t really sleep at all because of it. Other nights, she sleeps restlessly, unable to find respite in her makeshift room.

The dark feels suffocating in those nights. It drowns her and she wishes she had some sort of lamp to turn on, but her room only lights up when the Stormtrooper outside keys it in. She’s asked on occasion for some light, but there’s never been a response, so Rey shuts her eyes and tries to find the light in her mind, the one that guided her through Ren’s thoughts the day he’d gotten back from his mission.

For some reason, each time she tries to find it, it gets more and more difficult. It isn’t as if it’s dimmer, but it’s evading her. What’s the point of all the breathing if she can’t seem to hold onto that light as easily as before? Those nights, she _desperately_ wishes for some sort of light in the room, because she can’t grab it from her thoughts.

And when she wants it that much, she feels the darkness weigh over her some more, and the light seems to become harder to catch.

She tells Ren about it one day. He lets nothing show on his face, but he says, “That’s good, Rey, very good.”

“But—it feels terrible,” she tells him.

“It should,” he says. “That’s how you know you’re learning. This is the way you become powerful, Rey. It’s how you and I will be able to find your family.”

His words brighten her up a little. “You and I”, he’d said. “You and I”! She’ll be able to help him when she’s older, more powerful. She can’t wait for it. The years will pass far too slowly for her. Nothing can distract her from her goal—not that ridiculous Major Hux, not any missions for which Ren will have to leave, not any random Stormtrooper on the entire base, not even some nobody working in sanitation. No one can distract her!

Ren seems pleased at her acceptance of his words. They spend a long, long time working on breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the record, my sw and reylo-specific tumblr is haikoui.tumblr.com.
> 
> hope y'all like this chapter. idk how often i'll be able to keep up long chapters and quick updates, but i think i can do it!


	3. Year 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ren is twenty-two. Rey is eleven.

It has been the same, vague dream for a while now. His little scavenger digs through mud on an empty island, her hands pulling out the roots of weeds, hearing footfalls on the stone steps just beyond the clearing. _These are your first steps,_ it says, and Kylo Ren wants the voice to drown away in the ocean. He recognizes it, somewhere deep in his head for some reason, but it isn't part of the Dark.

He doesn’t quite know where he is—sometimes he sees the mud himself as though he cuts his skin on small, sharp rocks, and other times he is watching over the cliff at the little four-year-old Rey, who smears mud on her face and laughs at the sky.

 _These are your first steps,_ whisper the clouds over their heads, before releasing a torrent of rain on the little scavenger’s hopeful face. She shrieks in delight, trying to block her eyes from the heavy pelting drops of rain. It doesn’t quite work, but she doesn’t seem to care. She _should_ care, in Kylo’s opinion, but she’s so small and little he figures it doesn’t matter, and besides, it’s only a dream—

 _Take it away,_ says another voice, and suddenly the smile on his scavenger’s face vanishes; her face goes pale and she turns her head back down, toward the mud, digging deeper, far deeper, her little arms growing sore—he can feel her. _Feel it, little one,_ says the voice again, and Kylo shivers as the rain grows cold, frigid, beginning to ache as they turn to sleet. Rey lets out a whimper as the downfall intensifies, digs more and more until she can’t dig anymore, and the clouds darken; whatever sun that had been seeping through the clouds is completely gone, now, and the little scavenger below presses her hands to her ears.

“Stop it!” she cries aloud, shaking her head. Her voice is smaller. Seven years younger. Every night, the dream occurs in the same way. “Stop it—go away!”

 _These are your first steps,_ but the voice is different now, no longer the hush of a spirit long gone from the world. It breathes malevolently down on the toddler below. She shakes her head wildly, the three small buns on the back of her head coming undone at the ferocity of her movements. “GO AWAY,” she screams. Her shrill voice pierces straight through Kylo’s ears and down to his cold toes, and she keeps screaming it until her voice cracks and splits like the thunder in the sky. “GO AWAY!”

Rey’s eyes screw shut. Kylo’s world goes dark and the sleet, now turning into heavy pelts of hail and ice, brings blood and bruises to his cheeks.

And then his eyes open to the darkness of his quarters. The metal ceiling is barely visible as he struggles to adjust to it. His head is aching and his teeth gnash together as he sits up. Blood thrums through his ears; his heart races to the tune of the hail still stuck in his head, but then his mind stops swimming and he realizes none of it is real.

Though it _is_ very real, and Kylo knows that his master is beginning to take matters into his own hands. It had been Lord Snoke’s voice in the dream. His voice had blotted out Rey’s sun and had caused the hail to fall. Kylo stands, ignores the soreness in his limbs and the imaginary bruises along his cheekbones as he rubs a hand over his face.

He can feel Rey awake in her own quarters down the hall. Helmet and cloak on. A quick key-in of the code and his door slides open. The Stormtrooper standing guard in front of Rey’s room turns his helmet in Kylo’s direction.

Kylo is absolutely certain he looks ridiculous, but he doesn’t care at the moment. This is Snoke’s test for him: to make sure that Rey is being properly affected by this dream. He doesn’t have to say anything to the Stormtrooper for him to open the door.

Once it’s open, he can see inside. Rey’s eyes are wide open, pointed at the ceiling.

The light from the hallway grabs her attention and she gasps, sitting up and pushing against the wall. “Get away!” she hisses, holding up her hand. “Get away! Don’t get near me!”

Kylo ignores her, moving closer—she shrieks this time and Forces him away; he propels backward, flies out of the room and back into the hallway; his helmet rattles against his skull and he sees double.

The Stormtrooper raises his weapon in alarm. A sharp jolt of fear resonates from Rey and she presses back against the wall in her room again, and Kylo Ren snaps, “Put down your weapon! She’s not a threat! Are you an idiot?”

“Sir, she—”

“She’s learning,” says Kylo, rising to his feet. “You’re dismissed. You don’t need to stand guard here anymore. I don’t need doubt from _you_ about how I handle my apprentice.”

The Stormtrooper hesitates. Then the helmet ducks slightly in response. “Yes, sir.” He walks away, footsteps echoing down the hall and across the rest of the silent wing.

Kylo swiftly enters the room, pulls off his mask—Rey relaxes against the wall and begins to cry. “I—I thought you were—”

“Did you have a nightmare?” he says, kneeling beside her cot. He’ll think about her sudden burst of the Force from her mind when she’d slammed him into the wall later. For now, she swallows and nods quickly, hiccuping, and he says, “Explain to me what happened, Rey.”

“I—I don’t r-remember—there was dirt,” she stammers, her hands searching for something to pull apart and put back together. The unfortunate recipient is the blanket. Its fraying ends thread even more. She doesn’t seem to notice in her temporary despair. “I think—I think I was d-digging in it—then everything turned dark and there was ice in my skin—”

Her memory is getting better, but it isn’t good enough. Lord Snoke will have to do more, or Kylo himself will have to affect her dreams. Kylo Ren sighs and sets the mask beside him. “It’s over for now,” he tells her, and this doesn’t have the same consoling effect that Rey wants. “How do you feel? Tell me.”

“How do I—feel?”

“Yes. Words, Rey, give me words. _Describe it._ ”

“Hurt,” she says, brows furrowing. “My skin hurts . . . I feel hurt and scared. . . .”

Kylo withholds a sigh. It’s been the same for a long time now, but only tonight has he asked her to voice what she feels inside. There aren’t enough parts to her feeling, not enough maturity to make a distinction in her emotions. They’ll have to keep going at it, then. Isolating individual, specific feelings will help her strength. “Go back to sleep,” he says. She shakes her head; he has to repeat it. “Rey, you need to go back to sleep.”

“I can’t—I can’t—”

“Sleep!” he insists, firmly, and she gasps, “I _can’t,_ Ren!”

A moment later, his hand waves over her temple, grasping at her awareness almost painfully, and she sags forward into her cot, eyes shut, mind deep in a young realm Kylo hasn’t experienced in years.

 

* * *

 

 _These are your first steps,_ says a voice as she stares down at the red on her hands. She’s dug so much that she’s cracked the skin on her knuckles and she can’t tell the difference between grime and her own skin. She looks up, wishing desperately that there were someone else with her to see what she sees, but there’s no one here with her except that awful voice. Rey can’t remember a time it wasn’t in her head. Can’t remember a time when it doesn’t curse her with those awful five words.

A crack of thunder in the pouring sky signifies the downpour of sleet, and the next flash of lightning comes with beating of hail. “Ren,” she says to herself. “Ren . . . where are you? Can’t you feel me?”

“ _Stand up,_ ” says a harsh voice at her ear, and suddenly Ren is crouching beside her, dark eyes pinned on her over his long nose. “Stand _up._ What are you doing? Why are you wasting your time?”

She bites back the retort on her lips. Why is _he_ wasting _her_ time? Hadn’t he promised to help her find her family? She wants to shove him away into the mud but her hands are too red and he is too large. “Stand up,” he says again, and she really doesn’t want to listen to him.

“Why are you doing this?” she says, though it might be too quiet for him to hear.

Except he does hear it. “This is part of your training,” he says. “I went through the same thing, Rey. A little older than you, but I went through it all the same.”

 _It feels awful,_ she thinks. The hail punches her skin with sharp, precise pricks, but she’s gone numb from it a long time ago. Instead, what feels awful is the sinking feeling that Ren won’t save her from these weekly nightmares.

“Stand up, Rey!” he says, growing impatient.

“I hate this!” she cries. “I _hate_ this! How can you do this? I hate this, Ren!”

“Then _hate_ it!” he yells back through the gusting wind, hoarse and cracked and wide-eyed with manic. “Do you think I like it? No, my little scavenger, I _hate_ it, and I let it fill me! This is your test for the Dark Side! This is your test to make you _powerful!_ Hate it! Let it consume you! Let it teach you!”

The Dark Side? Is this what it’s all about? She never thought about it being reliant on _sides,_ on the light or the dark, but now there’s very clearly a side that she’s learning—and hers is the Dark Side, and so is Ren’s, and she feels something brew inside her she can’t quite comprehend. Sadness? Confusion?

“Are you angry?” he shouts at her ear; the wind is whipping and there’s hail threatening to fly into her eyes. “ _Are_ you?”

Angry? No, she aches and she wants to be out. What is the Light like? She has a distant memory, a light in the back of her mind that she used to try to catch, but it is so far from her now she can’t find it anymore.

Rey can’t tell the difference between the melting hail on her cheeks and the tears that leak through her eyes. She shuts them, wants to wake up and be free of the nightmare. If only she can grab the light in the dark—

—it’s not there, she can’t find it—

—she grabs at _something,_ opens her eyes to the ceiling above her cot for the ninth week in a row, and feels very, very empty.

 

* * *

 

“I want to do something other than breathe for hours in an empty room,” she says crossly to Kylo, who walks her toward the training room for her daily lessons. “You’re so busy all the time. All I do is sit in a room for five hours and _breathe._ What good is that?”

“We aren’t doing that today,” he says.

“Lucky me.” Kylo practically hears her roll her eyes.

“We’re going to look at the dreams you’ve been having,” he says to her, and she goes silent. Anxiety begins to fill his mind as it pulses off of the young girl at his side, knows that’s what she’s feeling, understands the word she can’t quiet pinpoint. She might call herself “scared”. He knows her feelings are much deeper than that, even if she doesn’t.

“Why do we have to do that?” she asks quietly, though for the past few months, she’s already learned the answer. “You already look at all the dreams I have, _anyway._ No respect for my privacy on your part. . . .”

“I’m leaving for another mission with the Knights of Ren,” he tells her. “ _You_ have to be able to remember your dreams and search through your memories. That’s your responsibility.”

Silence permeates the air as he opens the door to the new room in which she trains. It’s dark, uncomfortably cold, and a weight sinks on her chest that doubles the sickening feeling around her head. “Another mission, then,” she says sourly, stepping away from him.

Kylo’s shoulders grow tense. He has missions to both find Luke Skywalker’s whereabouts, as well as to keep the Resistance from locating the last Jedi, and it isn’t _his_ fault that he’s the one leading them. It’s his test and it’s part of his training. Much like this is for hers.

While he’s immersed in his thoughts, Rey moves into the room and shivers. The goosebumps that erupt on her skin tickles through his concentration. She doesn’t have to say she’s cold—he can feel it, little pricks running down his arms, even though his clothing is well insulated to low temperatures.

The look on her face is too much, so Kylo exhales, long and tired. “Fine. What do you want to do today, Rey?”

Rey’s head whips around to him, the three buns on the back of her head bouncing with the movement and coming loose slightly; the grin on her face is so wide and her elation is so pure, so tangible that he has to lean against the threshold of the door. “What do _I_ want?” Her exclaim rings off the towering walls and the high ceiling of the old, empty, frigid room. “I want to fight!”

That is _not_ the answer Kylo expects, and he automatically says, “No.”

“Yes!” says Rey.

Kylo ducks his head. There isn’t anything wrong with her learning it. But he isn’t sure what sort of—

“I know exactly what I want to do,” she announces. Apparently they’re both on the same wavelength, unsurprisingly. “I want to learn how to fight with a staff. I used to have a small one. I’ve always wanted a big one. Taller than me!”

“Taller than you,” Kylo echoes weakly.  

Half an hour later, she has a small staff-like object in her hands—one of the typical practice weapons they give to children who will become Stormtroopers in the First Order. Rey marvels at it quietly, holding in her hands and tracing her fingers down the length of it, sometimes commenting on how easy it is to twirl through her hands. “This isn’t as tall as I would’ve liked,” she notes, “but it’ll do.”

“You won’t be able to hold the actual staffs.”

“Yes, I will. My hands are big enough!”

Her hands are only half the size of his, and he doubts they’ll grow to be his size, anyway. “Let’s see how well you do,” he tells her, “before we get you any larger weapons.”

To his surprise, Rey is _very_ good with the staff. Kylo himself has always had trouble with that sort of weapon—he prefers ‘sabers, standard sword-like weapons that extend his arm, but Rey—even at her young age—has a keen liking for the length of the staff. She is good at using it as a shield—a much more difficult task with a one-armed weapon.

Kylo doesn’t make her fight him, of course, because it would be horribly unfair. Even Rey seems to know this. Instead, he has her copy forms and focus on hitting dummies. After about an hour, she presses her lips together, starts to readjust her grip on the small staff—and she’s tired. Both from practicing the same form over and over again, and from simply practicing in general.

“I want to practice against _you,_ ” she says when he takes the weapon away. “Don’t you think that’d be more fun?”

Her last word seeps into him like a poison. It isn’t supposed to be fun. Never fun— _his_ life isn’t fun. Nothing is a game. It shouldn’t be enjoyable. She won’t gain power like that. Fun isn’t for the Dark Side—fun isn’t for her or for him or for the Knights or for the First Order or for—

“Ren?” comes her voice at his side, and suddenly Rey looks very timid, wide-eyed and pale. “You’re scaring me,” she adds, unsure. “You feel angry.”

 _Angry_ , damn it. Can’t she feel anything else? Suddenly, Kylo Ren is impatient. Furious, _betrayed_ that he’s had her learning from him for two years, and yet all she’s done is breathe and all he has to do is babysit a child in her nightmares. It’s Supreme Leader Snoke’s words— _snuff out her Light—_ that make him do this, but it’s taking too long! _Far_ too long! “No,” he says, jaw clenching. “I’m just disappointed.” Then, like a child might do themselves, Kylo storms off out of the room, not bothering to check after her.

Later he finds out she had found her way back but was severely reprimanded by Major Hux. He feels guilty, then, that she was subjected to Hux, but he’s still held up in the stormy outrage of impatience and annoyance at all of it. Spending his time with his scavenger—no, _the_ scavenger—and not spending time on important missions to find the last Jedi makes him feel furious, unappreciated, worthless . . . angry, he’s angry, in Rey’s simpler words . . . that damn girl whose simple feelings he’s subjected to feel.

 

* * *

 

His feelings don’t wane over the course of his mission. He takes this mission with the Knights this time, receiving intelligence about a pilot around fifteen years passed who, reportedly, had been a _Rebel_ pilot—and that her son is with the Resistance as a pilot himself, perhaps only a little older than Kylo Ren. He’s to search the contact who claims to know the dead pilot, who claims to correspond with her son.

Except the source is another fake, planted there by someone who doesn’t want the First Order to know anything. Kylo, growing tired of this game, screams at the Knights as they scramble to find the dead pilot’s son. “They’re not escaping me!” he screams at them. “I am tired of running into dead ends, chasing masks of Resistance _scum_ who treat me like a _child_! I am _above_ them!” _Grandfather! Please! Lend me your strength!_ His voice is seething in his head. _Give me a sign! Somewhere to the Resistance!_

Several days later, after he terrorizes villages on planet after planet in a blind rage, one of his Knights—Vero—approaches him with a sneer on his face and a name scrawled on a sheet of paper. “Bey,” reads Kylo. “ _Shara Bey._ This means nothing to me. Who do you take me for, _Vero_?”

“That’s the name of the dead pilot,” says Vero, chin upturned. “You asked, _Master._ ”

“Find me the name of the _living_ pilot, you idiot, if you want to keep your cheeky tongue!”

But no name is found, no connection to any son working for the Resistance. Senses aflame and mind racing with impatient agitation, Ren pulls the Knights out onto the soaked soil of Yavin 4 near the Force-sensitive tree; Yavin itself grows red in the distant sky, casting him and his ‘saber a slight setting tint, but his Knights are unfazed.

“FIGHT ME!” he screams at the Knights. “ _FIGHT ME!_ WHOEVER WINS AGAINST ME WILL BE THE MASTER OF THE KNIGHTS OF REN! HERE!” His voice cracks like a little boy’s. What game are they _playing?_ Why can’t he find Luke Skywalker? Why can’t he find anything? Why is he weak? Why does no one tell him anything! “NOW! _”_

He rips his lightsaber out, ignites the plasma blade. Vero steps forward, holding out his own staff. “You’re weak, Kylo!” the Knight calls, and Ren bristles at the sound of the informal name. “You’re weak, unsuited for the job! _Weak!_ ”

“And yet you follow me!”

“ _We’re forced to!”_ says another—Darta, who was never quite impressionable—and her foot is outstretched, joining the fight. “Hand over the title, _Kylo!_ ”

“You think me weak—you think me incompetent—!”

“All because of one”—says a third Knight, red light of Yavin a reflection on the black metal of the Knight’s helmet—“little”—and he brandishes his weapon—“ _scavenger._ ”

Kylo’s vision goes red. Something happens as the blood thrums through his ears, something that sounds like a _bang!_ as his lightsaber splits in his hand.  The Force makes him dizzy, burns through his mind for a moment and it takes all his effort to deflect the onslaught of his Knights, who come at him with their weapons striking for blood. Kylo raises his ‘saber, which is heavier, unbalanced, but _powerful,_ and something has changed, _his Grandfather has given him a sign_ —

His vision refocuses; there are two cracks on either side of the kyber crystal at the top of the hilt, and the plasma blade escapes in bursts of white-hot energy on either side. The main blade itself is crackling with unkempt energy, sizzling alongside Kylo’s adrenaline, but it feels complete to him, matching his screaming insides with the roar of unstable plasma within. The cracked kyber crystal sits in the middle of the shattered hilt, staring him in the eyes in the split second it takes to counter the Knights’ attacks.

He blocks, parries, and switches to the side, twirls the ‘saber like an extension of his arm, and one of the  old teachings of the Seventh Form comes back to him in a long-forgotten memory. He is not good at it, but he can improvise and make it his own after he deals with the weaklings in front of him. “Am I WEAK?” he shouts at them. “Do you think me WEAK to have served Lord Snoke all these years? To have earned the nickname _‘Jedi Killer’_? _”_

“Weak to become sensitive to a child!” Darta spits back.

“She is my apprentice!”

“She has _distracted_ you!”

The Force is there, beckoning to him from just several dozen feet away. He wrenches his eyes shut, inhales heavily, senses it. The broken kyber in the shattered hilt of his ‘saber pulses in his hand, which is wrapped so tightly into a fist that his entire arm is beginning to lose feeling. _She has made me strong,_ he thinks in a haze of adrenaline, and then— _Thank you, Grandfather! Thank you!_ For if it were not for his anger, if it were not for his frustration with the girl, for not perceiving himself as weak, for not reacting with his ‘saber, he would not have this weapon at his side.

He blinks and, for a moment, sees an island in the middle of an ocean, but then the night is back once more and Yavin glows in the sky of its moon. Rey is dreaming right now back on Starkiller Base. Kylo hopes that his furious gratitude will reach her, hopes that she will be able to sense the feeling in its entirety—not just as  _happiness_ , but as something detailed and meaningful.

One hand at his side lifts and twists. The Knights in front of him keel and bow over, frozen, unable to resist. “You will serve me faithfully until my mission is complete,” he says, voice tremulous with rage, and the Knights stare straight at him through their helmets and repeat his words, loyal always.

They follow his commands all the way back to Starkiller Base, where they move, dazed, back to their quarters.

 

* * *

 

When he finds Rey sitting in her small room, she sniffs, says she tried to mind her memories, sense her feelings and move past the nightmares. She hugs her arms, stares at the opposite wall unseeingly, quieter compared to before when he’d left several months earlier for his mission. “The Knights called you Kylo,” she says after a while with tight lips. “That's your name, right?”

“Kylo Ren is what they call me,” he says, watching as his scavenger stares ahead, imagining something he faintly recognizes. The island in the ocean, tainted with red rain. “Ren is what most people dare to shorten it to.” Hux calls him Ren. He doesn’t really like it coming out of that man’s mouth.

“And Kylo?”

“An informality.”

“I’d rather call you that,” she says, before her eyes turn on his.

His mouth can’t work for a moment, mostly because no one really calls him Kylo unless they’re mocking him. “You—why?”

“You changed while you were gone.” She draws her knees to her chest and lays her chin on it. “I didn’t dream that night, when whatever happened happened.”

Bemused, he readjusts his tunic over his boots before he tells her to clarify. “I’m not calling you ‘Ren’ because it reminds me of when you picked me up from Jakku,” she says. “You’re not Ren, you’re angrier than Ren. You’re Kylo.”

 _You’re angrier than Ben_ is what she means, even if she doesn’t mean it himself, but somehow the words only make him fatigued. “I learned a lot while I was gone,” he says. “My Grandfather gave me his strength. The Force is stronger within me, now.” A beat, and—“And you have made me stronger, too, scavenger.”

Mud-ridden boots thump softly against the floor as he leaves, not noticing his scavenger huddle under her sheets as she lets a tear leak through the corner of her eye and lull her to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Rey does not think of the light that used to be in her mind. The light that had used to seek her grasp when Kylo searched her consciousness is harder than ever to catch, and she lets it evade her. She wants to catch it, wants to feel the warmth it has to offer, but if she does, she knows Kylo will break. She doesn’t like it when he loses control.

Sometimes she wonders what will happen with the peculiar Bond she and Kylo share, whether if he can sense the light that flits through her mind. She wishes, sometimes, that he might accidentally grab hold of it, let it melt in his thoughts and seep through his extending connection. It has yet to happen. Minds are close but not close enough to read or see clear images, unless they’re deep in slumber. Minds are far but not far enough to keep the unnamed emotions from him that she can’t distinguish, even though they aren’t quite _angry_ or _scared_ or _sad._

Perhaps the best thing is that Kylo is satisfied with her learning, the way she shuns the thoughts in her head and accepts the nightmares to grow stronger. He says Lord Snoke is content with her progress, but she really doesn’t care about _Snoke_. Kylo is the one who told her to train, not Snoke.

It’s, of course, the only way to find her family.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter's a little shorter than normal. the next chapter should make up for it. thanks!
> 
> added note: apparently he's referred to as kylo and ren in the screenplay (as well as, yknow, kylo ren) so i feel a little better! thanks @ actressen.
> 
> second added note: shara bey is poe dameron's mother, for those who don't know about his parents


	4. Year 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-three. Rey is twelve.

“I’ve already told you _countless times,_ Ren, that my men _are_ suited to accompany you on your mission. If you’d rather your pitiful Knights carry out your orders themselves, by all means, let them—but I am _warning you_ that they are not trained to follow orders as my men are.”

“Colonel Hux, you flatter me, as always,” says Kylo Ren, turning swiftly away from the control panel and hardening his look through his helmet toward Hux. “Your promotion precedes you. . . . You’ve done well for yourself.”

Sensing a trap, Hux frowns, levels Kylo with a look of distaste.

“If I hear one more word about how _well-trained_ your men are, I’ll take no one but myself, and I’m very sure Supreme Leader Snoke would be happy to hear why you doubted the Knights’ abilities.” Kylo’s five hundred percent sure Hux knows what will come for him if that happens; insulting the Knights, commanded by Kylo Ren, who is himself is still undergoing training with Lord Snoke, is as if Hux is insulting Supreme Leader Snoke himself.

“Your shuttle will be ready by the end of the week,” says Hux through gritted teeth.

“Good,” Kylo answers dryly. “Is that all?”

Hux’s lip curls and he turns on his heel, overcoat trailing behind him as he stalks out of the room.

Since Kylo had come back from Yavin 4 with the Knights, Hux had taken it into his own hands to remind him just how much the Knights seemed to think Kylo an incompetent commander. By the day, Hux’s insistence on how the Knights “will betray him” does nothing to ease the new turmoil that simmers through Kylo’s gut, a troublesome thing that only seems to go away when he has something to take it out on. Taking it out on Hux only makes Kylo angrier; taking it out on the Knights makes him doubly angrier; taking it out on Rey, well—it’s painful, and she’s become oddly detached from everyone around her as it is.

So Kylo doesn’t do much except sit her in a room and hand her a staff and some cadet Stormtroopers. When she finishes pummeling them, she sits and meditates on the night’s dreams. During that time, Kylo leaves her to her own devices and fights against the Knights with his new lightsaber.

He looks down at it. It’s sitting tucked in his belt, already worn from use. Once it had split and cracked on other side of the kyber crystal, he’d had to rebuild a new lightsaber from scratch. However, nothing let him select a new crystal—the cracked crystal always drew him back to his old lightsaber, and he ended up rebuilding a new hilt with the cracked crystal at its core.

The new hilt is cross-like, the idea given to him by the form of the original splinters in the hilt that had occurred after the Force surged through him like lightning the previous year. The plasma blade from the kyber crystal strikes out from those two ends like the extended hilt of a regular sword. The regular plasma blade is the length of his arm, doubling his reach, and crackling with unkempt energy. It’s no longer light. The ‘saber weighs down on Kylo’s hand and makes his muscles ache as he wields it, but he knows its for the best; he can feel the fatigue and impatient need arise through him as he struggles to get used to the feel of it. Using his new lightsaber is exhausting, reminding him how weak he still is and how much yet he has to improve, and all it does is make him fight for it even more.

The result is his snappiness, his caustic and impatient remarks to everyone who speaks to him. Even Rey has borne her share of his “attitude”, as Colonel Hux so kindly reminds him every passing day, and after several months she flat-out told him she doesn’t like him training her if he won’t train her properly—in other words, _kindly._

Even thinking about it now makes Kylo’s fists curl above the control panel. _Kind_ isn’t the Dark Side, doesn’t she know that? When she’d told him that, Kylo had barked at her to leave the room, and she had, but not before he’d trashed and destroyed every remaining training mat stacked around them against the walls.

Perhaps, though, the most tell-tale part of his “attitude” (and it’s always in Hux’s voice, that damn word) is from Rey’s new indirect form of training. Through Kylo.

Kylo turns away from the control panel and leaves, making sure to station a Stormtrooper at the door to keep watch. He’s to see Lord Snoke now and his stomach is tossing up once, twice, three times into his throat—a fourth time as he approaches the large doors to the holo room just beyond, and a fifth as he walks in and Lord Snoke begins to materialize in front of him, large and looming and wrought with a skeletal face from age.

“Let’s begin,” says Lord Snoke, and he descends through his chair and bends low at the seat against his spine, face close to Kylo’s as pressure begins to loom behind Kylo’s ears. “You know what to do. . . .”

It happens once a week, a test to see how Rey is doing—but it’s a painful one that surges through his mind and climbs along the thread of bond that links Kylo and Rey together. So far, the tests have been small, only hours at a time during the afternoon between Kylo’s lessons with the Knights and Rey. Compiled with the dreaming Rey does at night, it does the job of keeping Rey occupied, trying to grow from her nightmares.

These tests through Kylo—delivered by Lord Snoke—give Rey an awful sensation, as she’s so often mentioned to him before for the past few months, but she’s learned to expect them and to sit quietly as they happen, wherever she is. Mostly in her quarters. She never asks what happens to Kylo when he goes in for them. She has yet to meet Lord Snoke in person, regardless.

Kylo shuts his eyes behind the mask and feels the ache pulse through the base of his head down his neck, into his arms—down the backs of his legs and to his toes, freezing him in place. It trickles down him in a downpour of sharp pain, then, and his jaw clenches so tightly he’ll be lucky if he doesn’t chip a tooth.

Lord Snoke’s terrifying presence edges through to the thread of connection between Kylo and Rey, peering—inspecting their progress, grasping at Rey with a dark cold. Shadowed hands pull her consciousness in—Kylo feels her shock—somehow she’s been caught unawares this time around—she must have been messing with her simulator again, that damn thing, he’ll have to get rid of— _agh!_

He can’t move, even though he desperately wants to fall to his knees and claw at his eyes; a stinging sensation wracks through his cornea as suddenly he sees through Rey’s vision, and her sight of the simulator is blurring as she screams.

This is a regular occurrence for him, but she’s been caught so unawares that it is doubly painful this time around. Cursing his luck, Kylo does his best to take the pain and fester it into raw anger, feeling the Force pulse in the air as Lord Snoke continues to run through memories of his and Rey’s training. Flashes of Rey’s time spent sparring with other cadets, studying forms, reading textbooks—all of them are morphed into pain, associated with various emotions that Lord Snoke brings to the surface. Rey’s anger at being unable to fight against the Knights. . . . Her hostility toward Hux, who treats her lower than the occasional speck of dirt on his boot (as he acts toward Kylo himself). . . . Most importantly, the promise Kylo had made on Jakku to Rey, his words about finding her family, and her disappointment and feeling of betrayal as she thinks about how he’s failed to do that after so long. . . .

Kylo feels Rey grit her teeth, exhaling and squeezing her eyes shut to the visions—Snoke’s pleasure at her reaction skyrockets through their connection—she holds back a pained moan, frozen in place much as Kylo himself is, and slowly, she extends an open arm to the aching memories.

They rush through and pass into her mind, filling her with a gasp, and she slumps over.

Suddenly Kylo can only see through his eyes again and the pain rescinds, leaving a terrible throbbing everywhere in his body and along their connection. Lord Snoke pulls away, spine opening up back against his chair. He gives a terribly soft smile. “Very good, Ren,” he murmurs.

Kylo bows low, using all his effort to keep his knees from giving in. “Thank you, Supreme Leader,” he croaks. “How will I proceed with her in the following—”

“Tonight,” says Lord Snoke, “you will come to me, two hours after midnight . . . do not bring the girl. We will try a different tactic; she requires a little more coaxing, your little scavenger.”

Kylo blinks behind his mask, trying not to appear surprised at the command. Seconds clock by as Kylo bows again, bones aching, before he acquiesces and is dismissed. It takes him three times longer than usual to return to his quarters. The whole way there is spent in fatigue, pain, and confusion; Supreme Leader Snoke never before asked for him in the middle of the night, not unless something extraordinary was occurring. _Another test for Rey . . . it must be,_ he thinks, stumbling past several Stormtroopers whom he feels look at him through their helmets.

His hand stops above the keypad by his door when he reaches his quarters. Further down the hall, the Force pulls him along, stringing tendrils around his ankles, and he can’t help but follow, nearly tripping over his long tunic and crashing into the two Stormtroopers guarding Rey’s door. “Get out of the way,” he snarls, reaching for the keypad.

 _Click,_ and the door slides open, exhaling a feeling of dread and exhaustion. Rey is sitting in front of her simulator, unmoving, legs tucked under her thighs, head staring unseeingly at the screen in front of her. Kylo moves in and shuts the door.

“Get out of my room,” says Rey quietly.

“Turn around, Rey.”

“GET OUT!” she screams, bringing her hands to her ears. “GET OUT!”

Unmoving, Kylo unclasps the helmet. Surely, she will see his side—she has always been more receptive to him without the mask—

“Don’t do that,” she pants, scrambling to her feet and backing to her cot. “Don’t do that, Kylo.” A finger points up at his face, trembling, matching the way her lips spit accusations at him. “You—you’ve been training me all this time, and all it does is _ache,_ hurt—and not once have you sought to find my family! Not once!”

“You aren’t strong enough,” he says quietly, moving closer, but she sends a wave at him, slowing his steps—he pushes, silently annoyed that he taught her this Force trick, and manages to take another, but he’s already winded from the effort. “You have to go through this, and once you’re done, we’ll find your family _together,_ Rey.”

“ _Together?_ ” she gasps, her brows drawing together. “No! _No,_ I won’t—I’ve seen you! You won’t spend your time looking for my _family!_ You’re too busy with your Knights, with your Master, and—”

“I always keep my word, Rey!”

“Liar!” she yells at him.

The room suddenly goes cold and Rey hugs her arms around her chest; her eyes dart to Kylo, back toward the small window above several crates in the corner, before she looks back toward him again and backs all the way against the wall. “What—what are you—” She cuts off, edges to the corner as Kylo takes two large steps toward her, slow, furious, and suddenly he’s towering over her with his lower lip curled in four short words.

“Don’t,” he says icily, seeing her eyes harden at his voice, “call me that.”

“Liar,” she whispers.

“I’m helping you,” he says, and he steps back, pulling out his lightsaber. “I’m _helping you,_ and you call me a liar? If not for me, you’d be on Jakku, untrained—unknowing of the _talent_ you possess!”

Each passing word and his voice grows louder; each passing second and his knuckles go whiter against the hilt of his weapon. Rey’s eyes switch back and forth from the ‘saber to his face. “Put that away, Kylo,” she says finally, voice low. But Kylo knows better. How dare she? He goes through this awful pain for her, her own training—Lord Snoke’s idea to _snuff the Light out_ —and every week he channels Supreme Leader’s darkness through their connection to make her stronger. He has been giving her _everything,_ and she dares to call him a _liar?_

“You would be on Jakku without me!” he says again, and Rey shakes her head viciously, hair flying from her three buns. “Yes, you would! You _would!_ And you would be scavenging, living barely off the portions you made from pitiful parts— _a nobody from Jakku!_ ”

“But I’m here,” she says, taking one step toward him and angling her smaller, thinner face toward him, a face that has angled out over the years but is still fresh and untouched by the horrors of the galaxy, “and you—brought—me.”

His ‘saber ignites at his side. He whirls around, pulls it above his head, and slashes it straight into the simulator on the floor. _One._ It sizzles, sparks, blasts in their faces as Rey’s jaw drops in horror. _Two._ Half the screen flies into the window, shattering it, filling the room with the frigid air outside. _Three._ The processor fries in several directions as he flings it into the air. _Four._ The keypad singes and whines, blackening—

—two hands are wrapped around his forehead. “Stop,” says Rey, her voice quiet.

Chest heaving, Kylo struggles with a moment, wanting to burn the parts until the smell of metal and plastic is all he can sense, but then he senses it. At first he thinks it’s Rey wanting to concede with him, to offer her apologies, but when he sees her face, she is livid with cold fury. “Out,” she says, voice cracking. “Out of my room.”

Finding himself ashamed and embarrassed, he kicks the remaining parts of the simulator out of his way and breaks the door through with his lightsaber. The Stormtroopers look at each other—one of them says to the other, “Call Colonel Hux, he’ll draw up the paperwork to replace this door again”—and Kylo stomps down the hall, cuts his way through his own door, and shuts off his lightsaber, flinging it against his wall, enraged.

“That one, too,” says the Stormtrooper down the hall. “This’ll be the sixth time in the past two months . . . they should just set aside a part of the budget.”

 

* * *

 

That night is no better, but Kylo is more than prepared for what Lord Snoke has prepared for him—his shame in Rey’s small room had festered itself deep in his chest, lingering at the entrance to his mind through their connection, and he knows all she can feel is a pulsing dull roar of Dark. He finds that it’s easier to wield is lightsaber. Righter, in a way—it sizzles the more he thinks about her training. The more he thinks about how right she is, even when he doesn’t want to admit it. He doesn’t want to think about the fact that he _could_ have been searching for her family on those missions. . . . Yet, for some reason. . . .

A quarter hour before his appointed time, Kylo sets off to meet with Snoke. He approaches the same room with a readiness guiding his feet. She’ll see—she’ll see that his training with her is important, warrants her appreciation for what he’s done—Supreme Leader Snoke will see to it. She will appreciate him, like so many others have failed to do.

Snoke gazes down at him once he materializes in front of Kylo, his black eyes already deep within Kylo’s mind. “You are ready?” he says aloud, and Kylo doesn’t dare ask him what he might be ready for. He only bows, bent at the hip, twisted face masked by his helmet under his hood—

—he falls over, falling to his knees, then to his side as he feels his mind Forced to sleep—

—and then he is a child, sitting in front of Luke Skywalker.

 _No,_ the thought runs in his mind in horror, _no, no no no no no, what is this, what is this, what is this? What IS THIS?_

“Let’s run through the Jedi Code again, Ben,” says Luke. _Get me out of here, OUT OF HERE!_ shrieks Kylo in his mind, trying to leave, to pick his short legs up, tear into the wood—but he can’t, he can’t get up, he’s frozen and he wants to leave. He can’t control himself, because suddenly Luke’s face transforms into Snoke’s and Kylo’s just a boy, he’s Ben, and he’s screaming.

“Why don’t you let her in, Ren?” breathes Snoke in Luke Skywalker’s clothing, and Kylo shakes his head—how can he let her see this? In repressed dreams where Luke Skywalker lurks? “She can see how far you’ve come. . . . Let her in, your little scavenger. . . . You will let her in.”

 _I can’t,_ he yells in his mind, _I can’t, she can’t see me like this, no one can! No one can—_

But the pain is too much, streaking through his arms and into his fingers, and yet he can’t move. He watches, wide-eyed as a young boy at Snoke sitting calmly in front of him as Luke Skywalker.

“You will let her in,” says Snoke again.

_Supreme Leader, I can’t—I can’t!_

“You . . . will . . . ,” breathes Snoke, leaning forward so his pallid and sunken face is almost touching his, and the thought finishes in Kylo’s mind: _. . . let . . . her . . . IN!_

Kylo’s body goes numb and he feels searing torture in his consciousness, backing him into the corner where the thread of connection to Rey hums, and he can feel her asleep as he struggles to keep the pain from reaching her. Struggling, thinking of anything he can to keep Rey from being drawn into it—how can he let her see this?—he slips, feels it flux and scream, and pulse through the connection in a heartbeat.

Rey does not wake up. She’s dreaming of a faceless spirit of a man, holding out a hand— _These are your first steps._

“Ah, yes, here she is . . . the little scavenger,” says Snoke out loud, softly, peering at young Ben Solo’s eyes in the dream. “And how is she doing? Let us see. . . .”

He needs to stop this. Can’t let her see it— _won’t let her see it—_ his shame grows, his fury at being subjected to this humiliation, dreaming of a memory long past, belonging to another life, and Kylo does something he’s never done before—he feels her horror, sees her turn from the spirit of a man in her dream.

 _REY!_ he screams in his mind. _REY—REY!_

Kylo gets no response; he feels her bemusement, then her slow horror, then her pain. _REY—GET BACK—WAKE UP!_

“She feels it, does she?” says Lord Snoke.

 _Rey, please,_ he thinks, unable to gasp as the pressure closes him in his own mind, and if he can’t hold back anymore he might just lose himself—there is fire from him, fire from her, and he can’t—he’s suffocating, darkness closing in on his vision, and suddenly the world in his dream goes black.

There’s a pulse, something like shrieking in his mind. Something throbs. He gropes along in his consciousness blindly, feeling along the ragged, sizzling edges that shock him with terror. It thumps. Thumps again. A distant shrieking—is it him?

— _lo!_

He’s so tired . . . he must be drowning . . . his thoughts are muddled, as if in water. . . .

— _lo! Kylo!_

It’s getting clearer. . . . What is that?

_KYLO!_

_Rey,_ he thinks, and at once he’s sputtering and feeling against the walls of his mind, and then there’s the faintest light from where their connection stems. _Rey—is that you?_

 _It is—it’s me—can you hear me?_ Her thoughts are clear as daylight, now, illuminated by the light in her consciousness, spreading through the thread of connection. No, it isn’t a thread, anymore. It’s wider, stronger, not about to break. And Kylo recognizes the light. It’s the same one, though dimmer, that he saw in her mind back on Jakku.

 _Yes—Rey, you have to wake up!_ A sharp pain sears through him again. Snoke is attempting to reach Rey, to make her feel the Dark, but Kylo won’t have it. Not tonight, not while his most treacherous memories are within Rey’s reach. _I—_

 _I don’t know how._ Her thoughts are trembling, but she’s trying to stay strong. _I don’t know how to wake up, Kylo, I never wake up, you’ve always told me to deal with the nightmares._

He has half a mind to reach over and shake her, but he can’t do that. _This isn’t a dream! This is real! I’m with Lord Snoke!_

_W-what?_

_WAKE UP, REY!_ His thoughts are so loud—so torn as Snoke surrounds him in pitch black Dark.

She pulls away. The light leaves along with her. Suddenly, the world is cold as she leaves, takes steps away from sleep, and suddenly, she’s gone completely, somehow having shut him off enough to escape the pain through his nightmares.

Snoke makes a noise. “I felt her,” he says softly as Kylo struggles in young Ben Solo’s body. “I felt her, Ren. . . . Now she’s gone. Where is she? Did she wake?”

 _Yes,_ he gasps inside his mind. _She’s gone. Woken up, perhaps sensing what was happening—_ Is it possible Supreme Leader Snoke has no idea what just transpired?

Snoke pulls away—disappears from Luke Skywalker’s clothing, and Luke is suddenly back in his clothes, the sky is grey dotted with blue, and young Ben Solo is reciting the Jedi Code; and then he wakes, eyes open to the dark, high ceiling.

“Get up,” says Snoke sharply.

Kylo leans to his side, propping himself up on his elbow, before heaving himself to his feet. He can hardly see straight. He thinks about the medkit in his room, sitting with bacta patches even though they won’t do much good—the med setting in his ‘fresher, which he can sorely use, and—

“Again,” says Snoke. “Next week. Your little scavenger will not evade us this time. I do not know what happened, but you will reach her.”

“Of course, Supreme Leader,” says Kylo hoarsely, thankful for the mask on his face.

He’s dismissed and, for the second time in twelve hours, he’s stumbling through the hallways to his quarters.

 

* * *

 

He had fully expected to arrive to an empty room. Rey is sitting at the door, looking surprised as he makes his way over.

“Kylo,” she says, eyes wide. “I knocked—I thought you were in there.”

Kylo keys the code into the keypad and the new door slides open. “Why are you here?” he demands harshly, leaving the mask on.

“My door,” she says hastily, looking embarrassed and hurrying in after him. “You sort of broke it, to say the least.”

Oh. Right.

His own door has been repaired since _his_ room is actually a room and not an unimportant storage closet. Sighing, he comms a droid for several blankets and a pillow. Then he unlatches his helmet.

A gasp from the foot of his bed, where Rey is now sitting. “Your face!”

He frowns, looking back to the mirror, and sees how horrible he truly looks after several hours of “training”—his eyes are sunken into his head, circles etched under his eyes, and there is dried blood along the corner of his lips. He doesn’t remember that. “I’m fine,” he says, voice cracking.

The door beeps before it slides open and a droid enters, placing several covers on the bed and moving out. Kylo takes them and spreads them along the floor before dropping the pillow at the top. “You’ll sleep here,” he says, motioning to the makeshift cot. “Until your room’s door is fixed.”

“I wasn’t planning on sleeping here,” says Rey. “I just wanted to talk to you. I don’t mind sleeping without a door to my room, there are guards in the hall anyway—”

“It’s too cold in the hallway at night,” says Kylo. “That’s probably why you were easily able to wake up from that dream. Improper sleeping conditions.”

A beat. Then—“That was _real?”_

“I said it was, didn’t I?” says Kylo, lips downturned. “Go use the ‘fresher, then go to sleep. We have a long day when we wake.”

“You’re not avoiding me about this—I need answers!” says Rey quickly. “Look, I—I didn’t know you experienced that much . . . that much pain. It was awful, Kylo.”

Another moment of long, pregnant silence.

“And we should talk about whatever it was that happened with our . . . bond,” she continues.

Kylo freezes, having nearly forgotten about that through his sore muscles and even sorer mind. He’s been holding up walls, he realizes suddenly, to keep her from feeling the aches pulsing through his head, and his jaw clenches. “I suppose we can speak to each other, sort of,” says Kylo. “I don’t know what happened. I’d been called by Leader Snoke to give report on your training, and next I was asleep and seeing you in a dream. He was using my dream to reach you, I believe.”

“Your dream?”

“Nothing important,” he says. “Leader Snoke was in my mind, trying to get me to cross the connection. When I did, I saw you dreaming the same one you normally have. Only this time I was holding Leader Snoke back. I called out to you, everything went dark, and suddenly you were there and you were replying.”

“Does Snoke know?”

“ _Supreme Leader_ Snoke,” says Kylo impatiently. “And I don’t think so. He did not cross the connection enough to read anything. Only to spread his Dark from my side to yours.”

“Don’t tell him about it,” says Rey desperately. “Please. Don’t let him find out.”

Kylo stops at that, frowning. “Why?”

“Because! He knows everything—I want to be able to have _something_ to myself,” she says. “At least, I want to have something with you he won’t touch. . . .”

“Your mind seems to have drastically changed since this afternoon,” says Kylo dryly.

“Yes, well, yours has, too.”

He blinks at her, brows flattening over his eyes. _What is she taking about?_

“I’m talking about your whole anger problem,” says Rey, rolling her eyes. “I can hear you, you know. We just talked about this.” _So you’ll have a hard time hiding things from me,_ she sends to him. _By the way, you owe me an apology for my simulator!_ And suddenly Kylo is very angry at this connection.

“Go to bed,” he snaps, taking off his cloak. He shuts off the light, leaving her grumbling restlessly both in the room and her own head.

 

* * *

 

The next few days pass by quietly, with Rey’s door still unfixed and Kylo spending as much time as possible away from his quarters. Her thoughts are relatively quiet, thankfully. Though still very distracting. Especially when he comes back after training with the Knights, finding her sprawled on the floor, chatting with a cleaning droid.

“Can’t you stay quiet, or something?” he says to her when the droid leaves with some linens. “All you think about are parts, parts, parts. If you’d had a wrench, I’m halfway certain you would have pulled that droid apart with your own hands.”

Rey regards him coolly as he sits on the bed and pulls out his medkit. He rolls his sleeve up and places a bacta patch on his inner arm. In front of him, Rey winces. “I felt that,” she says.

“Good.”

“’Good’,” she parrots. “You’re so odd. Listen, when will my door be fixed?”

“Don’t know. I haven’t put in the order for it,” says Kylo.

“Maybe I’ll let Hux fix it,” says Rey, watching him carefully.

His eyes roll up to her, brows rising high on his forehead. “Hux?” he says, incredulous.

A triumphant grin spreads on Rey’s face. “It’s just a door,” she says, leaning on the heel of her palm. “Surely you’d want _him_ to file that annoying paperwork, not you.”

“Don’t even think about it,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

“You just don’t want him seeing you and your reckless behavior,” says Rey. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell. I’m a loyal friend.”

Kylo frowns again, rubbing at the bacta patch a bit harder. She’s his friend, is she? Then she should forgive his behavior, otherwise he might just be swallowed by his—

“Shame?” says Rey. Her eyes are knowing, now, somehow more mature—and suddenly he realizes that she _feels it._ There are parts to her emotions now. Parts.  No more raw anger, happiness, sadness—but she feels his shame, fear, sorrow, his grief; she feels her own isolation, his pessimism, her guilt at some nameless thing. She can identify when she is hostile, irritated, elated and bitter. When she fees contentment and next his resentment.

“I’m not—I’m not—”

Rey looks at him quietly, before she seems to let it go. “You still owe me a flight simulator,” she says. "And an apology. I won't be quiet until then, you know it."

If it’ll quiet her thoughts, then he supposes he’ll let her have both.

 

* * *

 

The following morning, Kylo feels _awful,_ and he knows it isn’t because of Snoke—the week is not yet over, even though he’s dreading it.

It’s much worse than that, he thinks, and he wants to curl up around his abdomen for the rest of the day. Rey thinks a small thought to wake him up, timid, not out loud for fear of angering him—at least Rey is considerate.

 _Kylo,_ she says over their connection. _Kylo, wake up._

 _What._ Even his reply is slow.

_I’m bleeding._

Oh, for crying out loud. “Where?” he says out loud, sitting up and rubbing a hand over his eyes. Then he squints. “Rey?” She isn’t in his room. _Are you in the ‘fresher?_

No reply, but he feels her affirmation.

He makes his way to the ‘fresher door and raps on it quietly. _Let me in, Rey._

_No, it’s—you don’t need to see this!_

“You’re bleeding,” he says out loud. “You need the medkit.”

_This won’t help!_

“Rey, come on, open the door.”

“No!” she says, out loud. “Get a droid, or someone who—”

“ _Where_ are you bleeding, Rey?”

A long silence before Kylo feels their connection tremble with embarrassment. Something clicks, then, and he feels his face go scarlet, starting with the tips of his ears. “I’ll, uh . . . Rey?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Step into the shower and wash yourself off. I’ll get a droid. Just . . . uh . . . be calm,” he says, his tongue threatening to trip over the words. “And you know—you know what’s happened, right?”

 _Sort of,_ she thinks through their connection as he hears the water run on. _Heard it over the years. Sorry, Kylo._

He doesn’t reply, instead heads away and calls for a droid before exhaustedly sitting on his bed. He’s reminded by how _frighteningly_ young she is, suddenly, and she’s no longer really a student as she is a young girl. So young. And yet it’s been four years since he picked her up from Jakku. Here she is, a normal part of his day, a girl who is only just starting to become mature in both mind and body, and he’s completely forgotten about it. He’s been treating her as he should, he supposes. As a student. But he’s forgotten, somehow, that she’s . . . still a child.

A droid arrives with new linens and takes Rey’s blankets on the floor away, not before leaving some things Kylo has seen here and there in some female medkits. Once the water shuts off, he picks the stuff up—whatever they are—and knocks on the door. “Rey?”

She cracks it open, looking at him with a wide grey-green eye. He slips her the packets of sanitary items and pills in his hands. “Do you know how to use them?”

“I think so,” she says. “Do you?”

“Of course not!”

“I’m just asking,” she says crossly. “Well, I’ll be out soon. I’m sure I can manage.”

She shuts the door in his face and Kylo walks to his helmet, scowling. Had he been this moody as a child?

 _You’re moodier than a child ever will be,_ comes Rey’s voice in his head, and he scowls even harder.

 

* * *

 

Rey is surprisingly untouched by her— _cycle—_ as he’d been expecting, and he’s fairly grateful for it, but the second she finishes her sparring session for the day, he shows her to her newly installed door and says, “You’ll start studying at the Academy here.”

“What?” she says, surprised. “Really?”

“Yes, you should know something about the galaxy aside from rumors and hear-says,” says Kylo, having given it careful thought. His Padawan should be well-educated. He’d thought about teaching her himself, but he doesn’t have time, and this will keep her from hanging around his door. “And they’re going to be graduating cadets next year to work on the Finalizer, so once they’re gone, there will be a proper room for you to stay in on the base.”

“Oh.” Rey sinks into contemplative silence. The information rolls around in her mind; it’s met with a slightly disappointed thrum over their bond. “That’s good, I suppose.”

“You don’t want to?”

“I quite like my room.”

“It’ll be too small for you in a small while,” he says. “And it’ll be easier to get to your studies when you have a room at the Academy.”

“Okay,” she says. _If you say so._

Kylo nods, at least gratified that she’ll do it. “That leaves us with the next . . . order of business. Leader Snoke will want to know about this connection, Rey, and—”

“—you _can’t_ tell him, you can’t!” she exclaims. “No way, Kylo, I won’t let you!”

“Well, what am I supposed to say when he finds out we can _speak to each other?_ ”

“He won’t figure it out,” she says, looking amazingly determined. “Leave it to me. Just _don’t tell him._ ”

“I’m obligated to—he always finds out the truth.”

Rey frowns at him. She’s hurt, he realizes as it seeps through to him, trickling over him like cold rain. “What do you want me to do?” he says, exasperated. “He’ll find out, some way or another. Tonight is no exception, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep it from him. I—”

“To _night_?” she interrupts, looking alarmed. “ _What?_ No!”

“Rey, don’t be afraid—don’t fight me on this! You know it’ll make you stronger!”

But she glowers at him, betrayed and furious. “I can’t believe you! After all that—how are you _willing_ to go through that again!”

“Because it’s helping me, and it’ll help you, too,” he insists. He points at his temple, then at her head, and he adds, “And I know we can learn to use it, with Supreme Leader’s guidance. We’ll be—”

“You’re incredible,” she says, awed, before she slides her door shut in his face, and he hears her think specifically to him: _Jerk._

 _Likewise!_ he shoots back nastily. She doesn’t reply, her end silent, and it takes him several hours until he goes to bed when he realizes she had sat down to meditate. It doesn't matter to him. Tomorrow, his shuttle will be ready, and he'll be able to leave on his next mission.

 

* * *

 

Kylo Ren is, again, in his young body of Ben Solo, and he fucking hates it, and he’s alone here. Because Rey is not asleep. He can feel it—he’s asleep, and yet she isn’t, and Snoke can’t reach her from here to prompt her eyes shut. Snoke is dressed once more in Luke Skywalker’s clothing. Kylo wants to burn the clothes away, singe them with his lightsaber, but he can’t move.

“Where is she?” says Snoke softly. “Your mind is closed, Kylo Ren. What is she doing?’

He can’t reach her, though—can just barely feel a hum through the dream.

She’s still meditating. Wide awake, but meditating.

 _Awake,_ he says to Snoke truthfully, though he can’t speak it aloud because Ben Solo can’t move in this dream. He’s frozen in place. _She—_

“Quiet.”

Kylo’s thoughts freeze. Suddenly, there’s only one point of focus in his mind. Discomfort, which morphs into torment, which becomes a stinging ache against his thoughts. “You’ve failed me tonight, Ren,” says Snoke, even softer than before.

Kylo barely wakes up that night, but when he does, he can only remember Luke Skywalker torturing him, the Jedi Killer, for his betrayal—and he suddenly wants nothing more than to find the last Jedi and end him immediately.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dunno how this one turned out... i've also been rereading harry potter, so this might... be... weirdly influenced by that? somehow? maybe in the language.


	5. Year 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-four. Rey is thirteen.

“Compressor,” she mutters to herself. “Throttle . . . this, this, and . . . the shield . . .”

Her hands click over the keypad, flipping the switches as she goes along, and suddenly she’s in the world of her newer flight simulator. Rey thinks that this is a good pass of her time, especially if she isn’t allowed to go wandering around to the docks and watch the pilots. She _wants_ to, but she’s learned very quickly not to ask about it. Kylo Ren is very adamant about her not seeing any of the Stormtroopers and pilots in action. She doesn’t really know why, but at least she can still learn with her small, newer piece of tech. She’s quite proud of it, really, especially given the fact that she’d pulled the parts to make it over the past few months from some of the trash carts rolling past with “older tech”. It works better than  
what she used to have, the little simulator she’d put together years ago that Kylo had wrecked, and she’s grateful for it.

Rey reminds herself that, given what she had on Jakku, she’s done pretty well with it. Too bad she can’t actually learn how to pilot a plane. Kylo would never let her. Rey subconsciously pokes the tip of her tongue through her lips in thought as she stares at the screen before deciding to purposefully give herself some new obstacles to practice against. . . .

There’s a sharp knock on the door before it sounds with a glaring _beep_ and the door slides open to reveal a Stormtrooper. “Breakfast in the mess hall today.”

Rey blinks, stopping the simulator. She leans up from elbows, now red and sore from the length of time spent leaning in front of the screen. “What?” Her voice comes out in a high squeak, and she frowns a bit.

“Breakfast. In the mess hall,” he says again, before moving into the room and hoisting Rey up by her arm. “You have clothes waiting for you in the locker room off the West Wing.”

“That’s so _far,_ ” she complains as he leads her outside. “Why do I need different clothes, anyway? It’s just the mess hall.” _Though I’ve never been there, myself,_ she adds to herself inwardly. She’s never needed to go.

“Orders from Colonel Hux,” says the Stormtrooper.

Rey blows a stream of air out of her mouth. She really dislikes that _Hux,_ for all his tall paleness and snotty behavior. In fact, she really dislikes the way he wears his overcoat. And it isn’t as if Hux is any different from the other commanders around the base. They all look the same. She especially dislikes him because of how he treats Kylo.

Her new clothes, which are in a designated locker in the West Wing by a new training room, are long and dark. She doesn’t really like them, but at least they’re comfortable and let her move around. Her tunic hangs around her knees, cloaking a pair of black breeches that tuck into tall boots. The top of the tunic is what she hates the most. It’s a long, tall collar that wraps around her neck and seems to choke her skin. What she’d give for a little relief!

The Stormtrooper raps on the door to the locker room again. She opens it and steps out, feeling a cold rush of air hit her cheeks as they start back the direction from which they’d come. “I really don’t understand why I’ve got to eat in the mess hall,” she says. A fruitless effort. The Stormtrooper doesn’t say anything.

Rey feels her stomach start to churn at the idea of sitting at a table with other people. She’s never had to eat with others before, never had to share a private time such as _mealtime_ with a hoard of strangers. Despite the fact that she’s been on Starkiller Base for so long—she can hardly remember Jakku now—she’s always been separate from everyone else. Being apart from everyone never deterred her from her training or her other endeavors, whatever other endeavors a thirteen year old can have, but she was used to working that way. Both on Jakku and here with Kylo Ren.

Her cheeks puff with air at the thought. She doesn’t really spend time with Kylo aside from training anymore, anyway. Sometimes she sees Hux. On interesting days, she’ll see Hux with a hair astray from his perfect comb-over.

Clattering utensils and the gentle murmur of the mess hall reaches her small ears as she gets closer. Rey wants to stop walking, wants to go back to her room and deal with machines, droids, tech—things she knows, not unpredictable people. She’s better at working by herself if she isn’t working with Kylo. And Kylo, she’s figured out, is pretty awful at working with other people, too. But she forces it away, stuffs the feeling deep into her throat so it lodges behind the choking neck of her tunic. She can do this. She can do this!

“Eat,” says the Stormtrooper. “Report back here when you’re done. You have twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes?” she queries, but the Stormtrooper turns away and she’s left standing in front of the mingle of taller, older men and women, the bustle of Stormtroopers and pilots and janitors and cadets. There’s only a handful of kids her age in the corner.

Rey walks around the edge of the mess hall and observes the kids as they pick up a tray of protein porridge and a packet of vegetables that they each tear open and dump into a bowl of hot, steaming water. It’s the same stuff she eats on her own whenever she gets out of training and heads back to her room, or whenever the guard outside her door slides it open and hands her a tray.

When she has her food, she scans the room for a place to sit, except there really isn’t one, not unless it’s right next to a group of grumps. Rey chooses a spot close to one of the cleaning droids.

Her food disappears from her tray quickly, but her heart is in her throat as she tries to stay out of others’ ways. Suddenly, she doesn’t want to be here, in a place where she’s trapped doing breathing exercises and isolated from the things that truly matter. Not here, not in her room, not in this damn tunic, not on Starkiller Base—and the thought is so strong that she immediately feels a wave of disgust plague her awareness.

Rey hands her tray to the cleaning droid and makes her way to the entrance of the mess hall, thinking very much that it doesn’t matter how disgusted Kylo is with her for her feelings. _Let him feel it! He hasn’t even found my family yet! He—_

 _REY,_ comes a horrible little thought in Rey’s head, and she withholds a satisfied, triumphant grin.

The feeling of disgust intensifies, and it pounds, stronger, stronger—it pulses with the sound of stomping in the hall, and the Stormtrooper waiting outside immediately straightens. Rey straightens just at the sight of it, but then she rolls her eyes and slouches over, just for extra emphasis.

Kylo Ren appears around the corner. Even the largest, blackest of masks can’t hide his abhorrence for her in that moment. He’s got her new tunic in his fist in a matter of seconds, words unspoken except to the Stormtrooper, to whom Kylo says, “ _You will not follow._ ”

“I will not follow,” and the Stormtrooper stays flat-footed where he is.

“Let me _go,_ ” Rey growls, trying to pull at her tunic. “Get off! Get off, Kylo!”

_Be quiet. Your insolence today, of all days, is astounding!_

She can’t say anything to him, doesn’t quite know what to say, because at the moment his anger and adrenaline is so harsh it sends her heart thumping straight into her mouth. What’s so important today, anyway? She’s never had to be dressed so formally. She’s never had to be subjected to eat in the mess hall. He couldn’t have given her some warning, maybe?

Kylo doesn’t reply to her thoughts, shutting her out with force, and Rey has half a mind to block her own thoughts, too. They’ve had practice with it. In her training, he’s been insistent on making sure she can hide her thoughts—especially since she wants to keep their connection a secret from Snoke. As the months passed and she got better at it, at shutting him out, she realized he’d wanted the separation because of her weird thoughts—nice thoughts—about the new Stormtrooper guarding the door. _Serves you right,_ she thinks toward him, pushing her thoughts against his so that he shudders. _Sometimes it gets annoying when all you think about all day is how much you want to break Hux’s nose!_

He lets go of her tunic at some point. When, she doesn’t know. But it _is_ long enough for her to realize that they’re in a completely separate section of the base, some part remote from her quarters, his quarters, the mess hall, the lockers. It’s colder here. Colder, larger, filled with a dense thing that presses against both her physical body and her mind.

“You’re meeting Lord Snoke today,” says Kylo. His voice is still hard. Terse, short.

Except then his words hit her full-on. It takes Rey a clench of her fists and a jaw-drop before she rears on the tall twenty-four year old apprentice behind her. “I’m _what?_ ”

 _Behave yourself,_ he sends to her. _Tell the truth to whatever he asks you. Bow when you first speak to him, call him by his title. You’re my apprentice, and I am his, meaning his word is law._

Rey shuts her mouth. Her glower withers away to an irked sigh. “Is this what all . . . _this_ . . . is?” She gestures vaguely to her clothes.

He doesn’t say anything, so Rey takes that as a yes.

 _Are you coming in with me?_ she inquires after a moment, extending an arm silently and tugging at the wraps around his forearm. He stiffens, looking down at her hand before his eyes meet hers.

“You don’t seem too fond of me at the moment,” he says quietly, out loud.

 _That_ much is true. “I can’t go in there by myself,” she says. “I can’t. I—”

“You have to,” says Kylo. The exhale of his mask sounds when he clicks it open behind his ears. Soon, it’s off and in his hands, and she’s struck with how horrible he looks. Sunken eyes and a spot of blood at the corner of his lips. If she focuses on the spot just below his tall collar, she thinks she can see yellow-blue bruises, the fresh ones she recognizes sometimes on her shin when she bumps into something quite painful. “You have to,” he repeats. He doesn’t lower himself to meet her eyes anymore, which is normally the case when he removes his mask.

Her fingers wrap into small fists at her sides. “Kylo—”

“Kylo Ren,” he says.

“What?”

“Kylo Ren,” he repeats. “Lord Kylo Ren.”

“I—”

“I have passed the main portion of my training,” he says. “My training will be fully complete when after I locate Luke Skywalker and kill him.”

The name “Luke Skywalker” soars over her head and into the back of her mind, where she promises to herself she’ll look over later. Right now, all she can focus on is the bloodshot eyes looking down at her from his long face. “Is this your training?” she demands. “You’re a Lord now? Do you get _tortured_ when you pass training?”

Kylo— _Lord Ren_ —looks past his long nose, straight into her. He feels empty to her. No loathing or disgust, or fury, or anything like that. “You’re hiding yourself from me,” she says finally. “Why didn’t I feel it? When you _passed your training_?” Why didn’t it hurt? Why didn’t she feel it, if he’d gone through so much?

“None of your concern,” he says, his hands mimicking her own by curling into fists, but at his own sides. “The important part is that it’s done.

 _You’ve been blocking yourself from me all this time,_ she thinks to him, horrified. _You weren’t just training me to block my thoughts. You’ve been doing it, too, Kylo, you—_

“Be quiet,” he spits. “Go inside. And don’t forget what I’ve told you. And practice what you’ve learned in our lessons!”

He strides away, tunic billowing out behind him, feeling untouchable as he pulls himself away both physically and mentally—Rey feels her stomach clench as he leaves her in the cold hall before this empty, foreign room, and she wills herself to grow on it. On the terror. To get stronger, like Kylo does.

 

* * *

 

Kylo moves past the corner, letting air out of his mouth as he locks his helmet back over his head; it fills with heat as it clicks shut around his ears. The doors to Lord Snoke’s room (where his master will soon greet Rey over the great holo) open wide. Soft steps fade away into them and the sound comes again when the doors thud shut. Rey’s inside.

He doesn’t want to peer into Rey’s head, to experience her emotions as she sees his master for the first time. He _knows_ it won’t be pleasant. _Good,_ he thinks to himself, taking care to throw up barriers so Rey won’t listen in. (She probably won’t listen in, if only he’d asked nicely. But she _is_ considerate, probably more than anyone he’ll meet. . . . It probably won’t stay for long, that trait.)

He waits. A long time. Kylo keeps his mind out and away from hers, but it doesn’t mean he doesn’t think about her, the past year spent experiencing her thoughts. He’d gone on his mission after his shuttle had been repaired, after that whole connection had formed between them.

Kylo’s jaw clenches. He has a Force Bond. With a damn thirteen year old scavenger.

The worst part about it isn’t the fact that they can communicate through it—it’s that she’s a constant little giddy spark of light in the back of his head. She’s always flitting around, small little thoughts responsive to his loathing at Hux or the Knights. _Won’t you give me a Wookie ride?_ she’d asked him one time when Hux had sniped at Kylo one day.

She’d been joking, of course, but it’d taken Kylo a _lot_ of effort not to think about his life as _Ben fucking Solo_ and . . . and . . . and. . . .

And _she,_ as he’s realized over the course of their connection, thinks a lot. A lot about little meaningless things. How to clean some parts, how to put together another junk flight simulator, how to rig the wires in her lights to stay on even past curfew. Most annoyingly, she thinks a lot about the Stormtrooper who guards her door three times a week from eighteen hundred hours to twenty-two hundred hours at night.

Kylo doesn’t like thinking of affection, nor does he like having his head filled with random thoughts of a random Stormtrooper who guards Rey’s door, nor does he like the little snippets of peculiar and irksome thoughts of how nice the ‘trooper’s voice is, or how tall he is, or how to get him to smuggle an extra plate of powdered veggies with her dinner. In fact, Kylo thinks the next time it happens, he might kick the Stormtrooper to the other side of the wing. It’s very, very, _very frustrating—_ how long does he have to deal with his scavenger having a pitiful little crush on _Stormtrooper?_

Pain rackets through his mind and Kylo gasps behind his mask, his knees buckling. In his hasty thoughts, his barriers toward Rey had dropped, and suddenly he can feel her again, can hear her raw thoughts—but he _shouldn’t_ —it hurts—!

And Rey, she’s shaking, her young mind trembling with untrained connections and weak defenses, light blowing out in shades of blacks and greys and deep, blood reds. _K—_ her thoughts are audible, as she’s never quite had as good defenses as Kylo himself— _K—Ky—_

He pleads silently, as silent as he can, for her to keep quiet, for her to whip up enough willpower, find it somewhere in her so keep her thoughts quiet from him, not to let Snoke know—it isn’t like _Kylo_ cares, and he wants the pain to stop, but he knows that if Rey doesn’t want his master to know about the connection, and—

Something shines in his vision as his eyes slide closed in numb pain. The hallway is empty, no one there to hear the slump of his body against the wall to the cold floor. The shining grows and he extends an internal hand toward it, trying to grasp it, clawing at its warmth, but he can’t quite reach it.

It isn’t his. It’s the candlelight that he’d seen in Rey’s mind several years ago. It’s never been snuffed out, never completely doused in the shadows that had plagued Kylo every week as Lord Snoke attempted to suffocate her light.

He feels her gasp, reach toward it, hug it close to her and draw her barriers back up as she reaches her reservoir of hope.

Suddenly, he’s very, very, very sad.

He’s no longer in pain. She’s shut him out, Snoke is done with her, probably marveling at her resilience—probably causing her more pain, but he can’t feel it because she’s done exactly as she was supposed to. In order to keep their connection from being revealed, she’s shut him out, and he can feel only the barest hint of discomfort.

 

* * *

 

He’s in his quarters when she finally gets out of Snoke’s room. _Kylo?_ comes her soft thoughts toward him, reaching out across the wings on Starkiller Base. _How do I get back?_

_Wait there, I’ll come get you._

_I’m sure I can find my way,_ she thinks, and he stops halfway through the threshold of his doorway, frowning. Rey is weak, he notices. Very weak.

 _I’ll come get you,_ he insists, moving quickly out of his room. _Just wait there. You’ll probably get lost otherwise._

 _You owe me a Wookie ride,_ she thinks blearily right back at him.

He finds her a good distance away from where he’d left her twenty minutes later as she thinks about small little details to fill her time. _I want a helmet,_ she thinks vaguely as he turns the corner. Her lips turn up into a small smile. _Not like yours. Maybe a little rounder. A pilot’s helmet, maybe._

“You’re delirious,” he says, striding toward her as she lifts her arms up from her position on the floor, leaning against the wall, toward him. He lets her wrap her arms around his neck as he bows down and slides one hand under her knees, another behind her back. There’s no way she can walk. There are circles under her eyes and he can feel the lightheadedness and daze clouding her vision.

 _You’re cold,_ she thinks.

His eyes glance toward her closed eyes, her temple resting against the cloak draping over his chest. _And you’re weak,_ he sends back, his focus switching to their surroundings. There’s no way he’s going to let someone catch him with his Padawan lying weak in his arms like this. He projects the Force outward, trying to avoid others, moving through the hallways as he seeks to avoid other First Order personnel. At some point, Hux himself is about to turn the corner—Kylo manages to turn the other way and out of sight just as Hux’s boots thump past.

They reach her small room quickly, but Rey shakes her head—barely—when he moves toward it. _I don’t want to go in there._

“You need sleep.”

A solid _no_ comes and smacks his mind full force before he backtracks, rolling his eyes, and heads to his own quarters. She doesn’t want to be alone. That’s what it is. It’s a pain, too, but, well—whatever.

So he goes to his own quarters, conveniently telling the other Stormtroopers to leave—especially that one ‘trooper she likes—and he opens it by punching the keypad in so quickly the pad itself almost jams. But it’s open a second later and he carefully deposits Rey onto his sheets before pulling off his helmet.

The second he looks back at Rey, helmet off, she’s fast asleep.

 _So much for the Wookie ride,_ he thinks, pulling off his gloves and staring at the empty spot on the floor. _Isn’t she too old for that stuff, anyway?_

 

* * *

 

The meetings with Snoke don’t end, to Rey’s dismay, and they are _by far_ the worst thing Rey’s ever been through. But somehow . . . somehow they help her find the light that’s been evading her for all these years. She hasn’t told Kylo ( _Lord Kylo Ren,_ as he insists, the arrogant “Master of the Knights of Ren” he is), but she finds that she doesn’t want to.

She’s torn. Very torn, in fact. Here he is, her Master, who is still barely an apprentice himself, and she really does like him, but he has his problems, and every time she has to meet with Lord Snoke, she’s reminded of all of them, every single time. The fact that Kylo has yet to search for her family. The fact that Kylo continues to treat her like a wounded child and Padawan, even though she’s older, much older than she had been. Sometimes—when Snoke has her crumpled on her hands and knees—she thinks about Jakku, and if her family ever came back for her, and if she’s missed them because she’d left . . . all for a false promise that Kylo would find her family. . . .

Her last session with Snoke for the month is with Kylo at her side. He’s silent the entire time, with the exception of “Yes, Supreme Leader” and “No, Supreme Leader”. The agony that flits through her entire being this time around is nothing compared to what Snoke orders Kylo to do for the rest of her training before he starts on his next mission.

They leave the room. Kylo sends her off to rest for the next day—it comes quickly, too quickly. And yet, she’s walking toward their training room, and there he is, and he sits her down on the mats, presses a gloved hand toward her temple, and leans close.

And he says, “You have ten minutes.”

These are Snoke’s orders: Rey’s next portion of training is to escape a mental simulation of white hot pain within a time limit, else she will have to do it again and again until their four hours of allotted training is up. It isn’t Snoke who acts through Kylo. Not in the middle of the night, not targeting her through her dreams or having her feel the pain through Kylo himself. No, it’s her own master, twenty-four years young, who causes her eyes to squeeze shut and tears to leak from her eyes as he breathes over her, whispering, “You will get stronger. . . . Ten minutes, my scavenger, you can do it. . . . Power will be at your fingertips the more you master this suffering. . . .”

That, _that,_ makes it very hard for Rey to not miss Jakku. She misses it. The sand, the irritating, deplorable little coarse sand that never quite left her mouth or escaped the cracks in her little dry feet. She misses scavenging. She misses some of the older scavengers she’d seen who, at the risk of their own lives, provided her some portions. Most of all, she misses not feeling torment streak through her mind, which swells this—this— _connection_ with the young man in front of her.

To make matters worse, she thinks when she clambers into her cot at night and thinks back on Kylo, making sure to keep him far, far away, is that she doesn’t think she can hate him.

Because she _is_ stronger. She really is. She can fight well with a staff and she’s become frighteningly good with mind tricks. And, every once in a while when Kylo unknowingly drops his barriers in the middle of the night, she can hear his dreams in the middle of the night. Which makes it all the more difficult to be angry at him. She hears the young laughter of a toddling boy; the groan of a Wookie; the light-hearted and loving soft words from a gracious mother; a father’s indifference to the boy’s untamed power, yet filled with smuggled humor. . . .

“So,” she says, one day before her training. Rey tries to prolong his form of Dark Side training as long as possible. She’s starting to run out of options on how to do it, so all she can think of mentioning today is, “Who’s Uncle Chewie?”

Kylo freezes, his back turned toward her as he halts in straightening his cloak.

“What did you say?” he whispers, still facing the opposite wall.

“Uncle Ch—”

Red fills the room as his lightsaber ignites, sparking against the walls and the floors; it catches on the mat she’s sitting on and she leaps to her feet, scrambling away. “K-Kylo!”

“Lord Ren!” he snarls, twisting around, face deranged without his mask. His large lips are parted open, heaving, large nose crinkled at her as he bares his teeth. Rey swallows her fear into her throat. She grasps around her, feeling the walls, hoping for a staff. Her staff. But she never has it. Now she knows why—

 _“You insolent little scavenger,_ ” he spits wildly; his longer hair whips around his forehead, now barely trailing past his collar, where several years ago it ended at the base of his head, the nape of his neck. “You have no sense! I’ve trained you, taught you almost everything you know, and you—you work _against me?_ Is it fun? Do you _enjoy_ searching my mind? _Do you?_ ”

“No,” she gasps, fingers peeling at the metal wall behind her. “No, of course not, Kylo—”

“LORD REN!”

“ _I will not call you that!”_ she yells right back, breathing heavily through her nose, trying to ignore the way he’s backing her into a corner with his glaringly red ‘saber, the heat of it making her go dizzy. “I won’t! I can’t!”

“You’ll call me Lord Ren!”

“I’ll call you anything I like, _Kylo_! _”_ She doesn’t know what makes her say the next words, what causes her to lose all sense of caution. “Not until you find my family like you _promised_!”

Kylo goes still again, face only inches away from hers, eyes almost red with madness.

Seconds tick by, the lightsaber so close to her tunic she thinks she can smell it burning. Kylo doesn’t move. Rey can’t breathe. Finally, when she can’t stand it any longer, she shuts her eyes, draws her brows together in thought, and says, “It’s been five years, Kylo.”

She extends a tendril of thought toward him, warm, welcoming, hope to bring him back.

“I thought you of all people would appreciate what I’ve done for you,” he says, voice cracking, and he pushes her warm glow away.

 

* * *

 

He leaves for a mission the next morning. Gone, no word of it, unplanned and irrational. There are instructions to move her to the Academy’s wing. And he’s closed off, no way to reach him, unresponsive to the beacons of light she sends his direction, wherever he is.

Wherever he is.

Somewhere in the galaxy.

When Rey settles into her new room at the Academy, a true room, albeit small, but nursing an actual bed with an adjoined ‘fresher and a desk at which she can do her work. She has classes the next week. Classes she really doesn’t want to attend, but there are Stormtroopers taking her from class to class and she has to go.

The next week comes and there’s still no word from Kylo, his end of the Bond cold and distant. The kids her age, training to be either comm workers, future Stormtroopers, other positions on the base—they’re all sharing her history and arithmetic classes, looking at her with dull curiosity as she’s deposited into a seat dressed in a bland black and grey uniform with a book. She’d flipped through the book the previous night, finding it filled with praise for the First Order, resentment toward the Resistance, all-in-all a very one-sided text that makes her frustrated. More frustrated than she’d ever been in her life. . . .

Nights come and go. There’s an empty bunk above hers in the room, but no roommate to share it with. Either specific instructions have come to keep her room empty or none of the officials think it wise to keep a regular student in the same room as her—the young Padawan training with Lord Kylo Ren. He’s somewhat of a legend among the students. An angry legend, but a legend nonetheless. The Jedi Killer. The Master of the Knights of Ren. Darth Vader’s successor.

The good thing about her time alone is that she finds respite from the training she’d had earlier with Snoke and Kylo. There is rarely any blinding pain in her life anymore, a month after Kylo’s departure to wherever-the-hell he went. It lets her think about the textbooks she’s supposed to read. It lets her find the faults that the First Order doesn’t want their little children to find. It lets her focus on that evasive light in the back of her head . . . lets her imagine the spirit of a man she’s only known in dreams. . . .

One night after feeling much lonelier than before—and she thinks it might’ve been a very fake hallucination rather than a vision—she holds onto the light as hard as she can, Kylo’s end of their Bond colder than ever, and she dreams the blue spirit of an old, old man with sad eyes and the hilt of a ‘saber as the wind whispers a name over of the trees—Ben.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY sorry this took like a week but! it's up! and guess what! i'm going to be adding illustrations to each chapter! they aren't going to be in the earlier ones for a little bit, but there are some in this one. shoutout to janainafaraujo on tumblr for doing a beautiful little illustration that inspired some of the Wookie stuff in this chapter. [check it out](http://janainafaraujo.tumblr.com/post/139274856763/someone-send-me-a-message-suggesting-a-fan)


	6. Year 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-five. Rey is fourteen.

The mission statement on his report, which is delivered to him on Moraband every other week, tells him how long he’s been gone from Starkiller Base. As of today, he’s been gone nine and a half months, spending almost eighty percent of it on Moraband, reveling in the Force that seeps through him as he studies the texts of the ancient Sith Order.

The Knights come with him, solely because Kylo’s word is law to their petty whining ears, and they’re there in the end to make sure he doesn’t fail in his mission. He’s been hunting for Luke Skywalker, of course, and had thought to go to Moraband to begin his mission. Surely his grandfather knows where to find the last Jedi. Here on Moraband, he will train until his blood blends with the red soil of the mountains, until finally a sign from Darth Vader points him toward Luke Skywalker.

Until then, Kylo spends his time honing his technique against the Knights.

His Knights have grown used to him and his temper. In fact, they seem to respect him now, not arguing against his words as he seeks them out to fight them, one by one until they all fall until the next day, when they start anew. He doesn’t need to ask why. It’s because of _her,_ the scavenger he’d left back on Starkiller Base.

Kylo doesn’t know what it feels like to let the barriers around his mind down anymore. The walls around his mind are so high that he feels physically numb to anything but the Dark Side. He’s blind to the connection, blind to whatever Light she harbors on her end. He won’t see it—won’t bother with it. Because, in the end, hasn’t he taught her everything she _knows?_ Doesn’t she understand that she needs to be _strong_ in order to find her family with him? Doesn’t she appreciate him?

That’s the worst part about it, he notes bitterly. No one appreciates him. Not his fucking Knights, not Hux, not his little scavenger, not even that—he shudders— _Wookie_ who followed _him_ around, smuggling shit across the galaxy.

He pulls the barriers up even higher. His mind goes numb for a second, dark and tormented and shivering, before he forgets about _him_ for a moment and he’s back to reading the texts on Darth Bane.

 

* * *

 

On the other side of the galaxy lies the smaller figure of Rey, who shivers under the thick sheets of her bed, trying to reach a vanishing ship on the horizon in her dream. When it disappears into the blue sky, she heaves and bolts upright, holding a hand to her forehead and trying to think about anything other than Jakku.

The small beep beside her bed makes her turn her head. Only an hour before sunrise. Rey blinks and swings her legs over the side of the bed, cursing as she stands and hits the crown of her head against the bottom of the top bunk above her.

Her eyes adjust quickly to the dark of the room, so she doesn’t bother switching the lights on. She raps quietly against the ‘fresher door. The ‘fresher adjoined to her room is shared with another room with two other students, students who never speak to her. She prefers that, honestly.

Hearing nothing, she clicks it open and stares at herself in the long mirror once she’s in. Her face is longer, nose longer as well, and her mouth is set in a straight line as she blinks once, twice more at her reflection. Her hair, tangled and painful in one top knot against the crown of her head, is so long now that trails the small of her back when it’s undone. Rey furrows her brows and pulls her hair out of its knot with some effort. Then, several snips later with a small pair of scissors in the medkit stowed in the corner, her hair comes down to just below her shoulders. 

They’ll be mad at her. Rey isn’t supposed to change her appearance unsupervised. She's scheduled to have her hair cropped short like the rest of the female students later in the week, but honestly, she can’t care less about what they might think about her appearance.

Rey puts the scissors away and dutifully cleans up the locks of hair she’d snipped off. The whole process takes no more than two minutes, and her normal routine after that takes only five more. She’s become efficient in it, trying to get done and out of the way before the other occupants in the adjacent room wake.

Her room is a little lighter now. Indigo drenches the walls and floor as she sits back on her bunk and stares out the dark window. Then, exhaling, she takes a nail from the desk beside her bed and draws on tally mark on one of the bed posts facing away from the door.

Nine months, sixteen days.

 _Kylo?_ she tries, hoping to pull him back.

His end is silent.

Rey stands up and dresses into her uniform.

 

* * *

 

“Here are the plans for the new base here on Moraband, sir,” says Lieutenant Mitaka, carefully handing Kylo a datapad for him to look over. “And Colonel Hux should be here within the next few days to oversee construction.”

“Oh, good,” says Kylo. He appreciates the way the lieutenant winces away from him at his caustic tone. “Be sure to tell Colonel Hux I welcome him with open arms on my training grounds.”

“Sir, these are orders from Supreme Leader Snoke—”

“Yes, I _know that._ Dismissed, Lieutenant.”

Mitaka scuffles away with a brief glance over his padded shoulder, but Kylo’s already turned around and pushing the Sith texts away on the table in front of him. He turns the datapad on, reading through proposals for the new secret First Order base on Moraband. “What an obvious base,” he mutters to himself. But he supposes it’s useful enough for Supreme Leader Snoke. It’s full of the Dark Side here, pressing on every edge of Kylo’s being.

He stops on a spot that mentions something very, very interesting.

“Endor,” he says out loud.

He scowls at the page, preferring not the think about the consequences of the Battle of Endor. But something pegs at him then, knocking against the back of his head, and he remembers a funeral pyre . . . _Luke Skywalker_ had mentioned it at some point in those dreaded years at the Jedi Academy. . . .

“Grandfather,” he murmurs, shutting the datapad off.

The pyre on the Forest Moon of Endor has been long at the back of his mind, something he’s never had the chance to do, but now he has the chance to do it. The datapad in front of him orders for a shrine. Supreme Leader Snoke’s demands. And Kylo will travel to Endor to retrieve his grandfather’s singed remains, which he thinks he should’ve done a long time ago.

He spends the remainder of the day choosing the Knights who come with him. Some will stay behind. The competent ones who can fulfill Lord Snoke’s orders. Those who will accompany him to Endor are the four whom Kylo believes will benefit from such a difficult task. Scavenging his grandfather’s remains will be difficult.

Kylo’s face wrinkles. _Scavenging._ Retrieving is a better word—

“Everything is set for our departure, sir,” says Lieutenant Mitaka, who wrings his hands together like a nervous child.

“ _My_ departure. You will stay here and welcome Colonel Hux for me with open arms,” says Kylo, mouth spreading in a sarcastic smile behind his mask. Mitaka can’t see it but he certainly can hear the false cheer.

“Of c-course, sir.” The lieutenant bows away and makes room for the Knights accompanying Kylo to the Forest Moon of Endor. The four Knights prop their weapons against the ground—vibro-swords, staves, the like—and wait for Kylo’s command.

He doesn’t have to say anything. Sweeping his tunic to the side, he makes his way toward his shuttle, feet stomping through the dry dirt as his Knights follow.

 

* * *

 

“Your assessment is scheduled for fourteen hundred hours.” The droid plugs a datapad into Rey's holo. It loads with a formal message signed by officials in the Academy. “Please arrive fifteen minutes early. Another message from the Major. Meet with her at the end of the hour.” The droid slides past; Rey hears the droid plug another small datapad into another holo for another student. “Your assessment is scheduled for half past fourteen hundred hours. Please arrive fifteen minutes early. . . .”

Rey stares at the message in front of her, at the signatures that mark the otherwise plain screen. Her assessment—an exam on what happened on the Battle of Endor—is in three hours, but she has to meet with Major Phasma in twenty minutes, and she really doesn’t want to. Clearly, she’ll be reprimanded for her appearance. _Can’t imagine what else it’ll be about. . . ._

So, when the time comes, she pads out of her chair and heads toward the Major’s office, taking care not to look too out of place. She submits her identification, gets scanned, and is allowed to enter.

Major Phasma is dressed in armor from head to toe. She’s standing behind a long desk that is impeccably clean; there is a holo on it, already turned on, with a video of Rey earlier that morning, snipping away at her hair.

Rey swallows, hating every minute of it. “Major Phasma?”

“Rey,” says Phasma shortly. “Sit down.” She nods her large helmet toward the chair in front of the desk. Once Rey does so, sitting as straight as she can, Phasma starts the holo from the beginning. Rey watches herself pick the scissors up from the medkit and begin to snip at her hair. Then she finds she really, really doesn’t regret any of it.

“You were scheduled to have your appearance treated by the end of the week, am I correct?” says Phasma once the video finishes again.

“Yes,” says Rey shortly.

Phasma doesn’t say anything for a long while. Rey tries not to break eye contact with Phasma’s helmet, but eventually she has to blink. When she does, Phasma begins, “Would you care to tell me why you cut your own hair prior to your scheduled appointment?”

“It was getting in the way,” says Rey.

“You could not wait several more days.”

A beat passes. “No, I couldn’t,” Rey answers.

“Unfortunately,” says Phasma, once Rey looks a little uncomfortable, “I do not have the authority to question your conformity. Since you are a student of Lord Kylo Ren, I must trust that you understand not to commit this sort of act again.”

Bemused, Rey leans back in the chair. Is she not receiving any punishment for it?

“However,” continues Phasma, and Rey sits back up, “if this occurs again, Colonel Hux will be looking into reconditioning.”

 _It’s just hair,_ she thinks to herself, trying not to glower at the armored woman before her. “I understand, Major,” she says, tight-lipped.

“I should hope you do. Consider this a warning. Dismissed.”

Rey leaves quickly, trying not to let the word “reconditioning” send shivers down her spine.

She spends the rest of her time studying meaningless words for her assessment. She passes it easily and tries not to forget what she’s learned. The info is horridly one-sided. Order over disorder. Law over freedom. Dark over li—

— _no, don’t think about it,_ she reminds herself as she walks toward the locker rooms.

She keys the room open through the keypad and dresses herself for her daily training. She’s taken to training herself as much as she can, but she’s run out of things to do. Fighting with a staff has become second nature, but she doesn’t have permission to start working with blasters or other weapons, and she _certainly_ doesn’t have authority to make her own lightsaber without Kylo’s permission—or Snoke’s. Every day she tries reaching out to Kylo, to see if she can get something from him—something to work on to keep herself from fading away with nothing to do. Without him, she’s lonelier than ever, and having him here was better than having no one at all. Even the _Knights_ are preferable than the Academy.

Just as she positions herself with a training staff and starts going through some poses, the door opens and a young man walks in, dressed in light grey sanitation garb and wearing cleaning gloves. He’s lugging around a junk cart. Rey lowers her staff, lips downturning as she watches him pull the cart inside the training room.

“Can I help you?” she asks as the man finishes pulling the cart inside.

He looks at her briefly through his goggles before pulling them off his face. “Sorry, I was just assigned to this wing for sanitation this month. Don’t mean to interrupt your training.”

Rey takes a long, good look at him as he walks around and sprays everything. He’s taller than her but not nearly as tall as Kylo, and he’s much darker, making the light grey of his bland uniform stand out. On his back spreads a typical identification number Rey sees on many of the cadets. _FN-2187._

She doesn’t really talk to them that much. The fact that there’s someone cleaning her regular training room startles her. She’s used to this room being empty whenever she uses it. Very conscious of him, she cautiously raises her staff again and starts going through her forms.

The _weirdest part_ about it is that, once she’s quiet enough, she can hear the cadet _humming._

“What is that?” she asks finally, unable to help it. She’s never heard a cadet hum before. Not once in her time here on Starkiller Base. She’s more in awe than anything else, even though she shouldn’t be. Won’t he be punished for something like humming?

“Hm?” says the cadet, turning his shoulder over at her. “Oh, nothing. Sorry, I shouldn’t have been—”

“No, it’s okay,” she interrupts hastily, shaking her head. “I like it. Don’t stop on my account.”

A second passes. Then the cadet’s lips spread in a wide grin. “If you say so. What’s your number, by the way?”

“Number?”

He frowns at her.

“Oh, I—” The cadet is talking about his identification label. “I don’t have one. I’m Rey.”

“You don’t . . . have one?” says the cadet. “But you go to the Academy.”

Her eyes threaten to roll. Not at him, but at the thought of the Academy in general. Once she’d liked the idea of studying along with other students, but that was a long time ago. Now she doesn’t like it at all. She prefers learning things her own way with her own thoughts. “I’m Kylo Ren’s apprentice.”

The cadet’s jaw drops a little.

“So I don’t have a number,” she continues, lowering her staff again.

“No, you don’t really need one if you’re training with him,” the cadet concurs. “I’m FN-2187. Working sanitation until I get sent up to the Finalizer to finish my ‘trooper training. I have this wing this month. Nice staff, by the way.”

Rey can’t help it. She beams at him. “Really? I need a new one, though, this one’s a bit small—”

“I’m sure there’s something I can find for you. We’ve got a ton in our own rooms,” says FN-2187.

For a minute, Rey thinks she’s imagining it. She opens her mouth a couple times but nothing comes out. Who _is_ this cadet? Every other cadet she’s ever bumped into has been completely uncaring about who she is or what she does in her own time. “That would be lovely,” she says, allowing herself a small smile.

He gives her another big grin, turns around, and starts to clean. Later, Rey finds herself humming for the first time as she sits on her bunk and reads through one of the First Order history holobooks.

 

* * *

 

“Can you quit it?” comes Hux’s voice over the holo.

Kylo looks up at the holo through the map in front of him. “Quit _what?_ ”

“That incessant noise. That humming. Whatever horrible noise is leaving your mouth, Ren.”

Staring at Hux’s projected image, Kylo slowly clamps his mouth shut. Humming? He never hums. He never does anything like that, no need to bother with anything as trivial as that. In fact, humming is so frowned upon in the First Order that—

No, he knows exactly where it’s come from. Gritting his teeth, Kylo tells Hux to fuck off before standing, kicking aside the chip of the map to Endor, shutting his eyes. It’s his scavenger, his chubby-cheeked scavenger with wide eyes and stubborn attitude. She must’ve been doing something while he’d been asleep or unfocused. He curses to himself, draws his barriers back up, feels himself go cold and numb as he pushes away the subtle warmth of her connection.

And she’s been asking for him every morning when his barriers are raw and low. It doesn’t help him when he hears her thoughts as though through water before he strengthens his barriers every morning.

He’s about to meditate to get the damn humming out of his head when the holo sounds again. Fighting back another curse, he accepts it and Hux’s face appears above the holo once more. “News about your apprentice, Ren,” says Hux, looking as if he’d rather be doing anything than speaking to Kylo at the moment. Kylo wishes the same thing. “Major Phasma delivered a conformity report to me about your scavenger giving herself a _haircut_ without permission.”

Hux delivers the news so emphatically that Kylo wants to smash the holo. What a ridiculous thing to care about. “And I care why?”

“Just thought you might know why she’s going around disobeying orders.”

“It’s a haircut,” says Kylo, feeling a vein in his temple twitch. “She’s not a formal student at the Academy. She is _my_ student and whatever haircut she wants to have is fine. If you think she’ll go around giving other students ideas, you don’t need to worry about it. She’d rather keep herself in a room all day than have to deal with _you._ ”

This shuts Hux up, albeit not nicely. The holo vanishes and Kylo lets out a long breath. He catches his reflection against the glass on the receptor. His own hair has gotten longer, but he doesn’t feel the need to cut it. He likes it longer, anyway.

It takes him a full half hour to realize he’s humming again.

 

* * *

 

When Rey comes in the next week into the training room, she finds FN-2187 already there. He looks as if he’s just finishing up. But he catches her eye and gives her a smile before nodding his head to the corner. “Left some of this stuff for you,” he says. “Brought it along with my cart. I don’t know if they’ll notice that I moved some stuff, but I figured you got a little bored with just your staff.”

There’s a small pile of weapons by the usual stack of mats. Rey dashes toward it, dropping her normal staff. “You brought these?” she says breathlessly. A longer staff, a force pike, several blasters—there’s even a vibro-sword for her to practice with. The staff calls to her first. The length fits her a lot better than the other one on the floor.

“Yeah. It was a little difficult loading them onto the cart, but—”

“Thank you,” she says sincerely. She strains her head over her shoulder as he nods awkwardly beside his cart. “These are wonderful.”

“Glad you like them,” he says after a second. “I’ve got to get back, but I’ll be here tomorrow again. Think you might want a training partner for about fifteen minutes a day?”

Rey doesn’t tally the day on her bed post the next morning. 

FN-2187 is a phenomenal training partner, patient and willing to teach her the basics of blasters and some of the other weapons. Rey likes him a lot, happy to have something to look forward to each day after the dreadful Academy. She has no idea when Kylo will be back but if she has FN-2187 with whom she can spend time, she thinks she’s alright. She’s stopped reaching out to Kylo every morning. Her new partner gives her a lot to do in the small amount of time they spend together each day.

She misses Kylo, though. Misses having him in her head, someone to talk to. Her end of the connection is burning while his is ice cold, and she wants him back so she can tell him all about her new friend, what she’s learned, but she knows he won’t listen.

“What’s he like?” says FN-2187 when she finishes training with the blaster one day. “Lord Ren.”

Rey bites the inside of her cheek, not sure how to reply. “He’s, er, fine. Tall, I suppose. Big hands, ears, big everything, really. He’s got a nasty temper sometimes.” At the cadet’s dubious look, she withholds a grin. “Well, alright. Most of the time.”

“He doesn’t sound that bad when you talk about him,” says FN-2187. “I’ve only seen him once when he was overseeing our Academy graduation when we became cadets. Rarely anyone gets to see his face.”

“I see his face plenty,” she blurts. FN-2187’s eyebrows go straight up his forehead. “Back when he was here, of course, I saw his face plenty, but I haven’t spoken to him for _months_ and I don’t really know if he’s changed or not, but I got to see his face. A lot.”

“That’s interesting,” he notes aloud. “I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you tomorrow!” And he pulls his cart out of the room, gives her one last large grin, leaves her to her own to think about Kylo.

She wanders the hallways inspecting everyone over the next week, what they look like, how they sound, the way they walk, and finds herself comparing them to Kylo every chance she gets. Hux looks like a rat, in her humble opinion; his nose is too perfect and his hair combed without a single lock out of place. Unlike Kylo, whose long face she’s used to, whose eyes crinkle the rare occasion he smiles proudly, whose ears stick out from the sides of his head so much that he grew his hair out over the years to cover them. . . .

Has he cut it? Has anything happened to him? She knows nothing bad’s happened, otherwise she’ll hear about it, but she can’t help but wonder. Wonder if he’s cut his hair, trained a lot with the Knights. Maybe he has a wrinkle or two, now. Though he is still young.

In fact, these trivial details plague her so much that she draws him into another one of her bedposts, taking care not to show it to anyone else. She doesn’t want to forget him like she’s forgotten her family. He’ll come back for her, hopefully, but until then she doesn’t want to forget him, so she tries to get the little details she remembers, like the moles on either side of his nose and his large lips.

“Do you think it’s weird?” she asks FN-2187 one day. He looks startled at her question. Probably has to do with the fact that she’s just asked him if vandalizing her bed with Lord Kylo Ren’s likeness is an odd thing to do.

“Uh, no, not at all,” he says. He looks a little uncomfortable. “Lots of, um, girls your age tend to daydream about a person, and I don’t think it’s just you. I’ve even heard a lot about Colonel Hux—”

“I’m not _daydreaming,_ ” she retorts with a scowl. “I just wish he’ll come back soon is all. I have my training to complete.”

Except she wanders around the Academy seeing everything differently as the next month crawls by. This is nothing like that pitiful little fancy she had on the Stormtrooper who used to guard her old room. She’s felt the occasional stir in her stomach, sure, the little giddy warmth in her belly at the sound of a deep voice, but never anything like nausea or loneliness that threatens to keep her in her room all day. She misses him so much, wants to see him again and show him all she’s learned.

So Rey throws herself into her work. She asks her new friend ( _friend!_ ) to bring her any piloting holobooks he can find, any spare parts, a way to actually see a TIE-fighter. She shoves Kylo to the back of her mind as she works on sketching parts and fighter ships and maps on any spare paper she can find, which is little to none; she keeps the small hand-made book out of that paper on her at all times, jotting things to remember, things that might help her learn some more.

She does it so much she doesn’t notice Kylo’s end of the connection growing a little warmer.

 

* * *

 

Kylo doesn’t like this cadet.

Whatever cadet he is, he can feel Rey’s happiness with him, and it takes Kylo off guard; he drops the barriers only barely, feels her blinding happiness at finally having some company. And he has to grudgingly admit that it’s a relief that she’s speaking to _someone,_ finally giving him some relief, finally not waking up each morning and reaching out to his cold end of the connection.

But this cadet is so beneath her, in his oh-so-humble opinion as _her teacher._ A cadet working sanitation? Is he not qualified to work under Phasma or to train younger cadets? He’s heard plenty about FN-2187 over the years from the Academy and then the cadet training, so why is this cadet ‘trooper suddenly working in sanitation?

“Who are the top cadets in the graduating class this year, Colonel Hux?” he demands over the holo a day later; Hux’s face twists into a frown at the question.

“Why the interest? You’ve never liked my men.”

He’s right. Asshole.

“There are a few select bunch,” says Hux. “I don’t quite know them off the top of my head. Major Phasma might. Do you want their files, or are their numbers enough for you?”

“Just get me Phasma.”

“Your gratitude is appreciated,” Hux tells him dryly before he connects Phasma to the call, and the major’s helmet suddenly appears on the other half of the holo screen. She makes no indication of surprise at seeing Kylo Ren through her helmet.

“Sir.” She bows her helmet slightly.

“Major Phasma, tell me who the top cadets are in training for this year’s graduating class. Colonel Hux didn’t seem to know.”

Hux looks, suddenly, as if he’s smelled something very foul.

“TK-7322, TK-392, FN-2187, and TX-901,” says Phasma.

Just as he thought, FN-2187 is one of the top in his class, and yet he works in sanitation, which boggles Kylo so much his head begins to ache. Normally the top cadets are assigned as trainers to students in the Academy or they work under other officers in the program before they become full-fledged ‘troopers. “And what are they doing for their graduation requirements?”

“TK-7322 reports directly to me, as does TX-901. TK-392 works in reconditioning.” She pauses, then says, “FN-2187 works in sanitation.”

Where Kylo expects this, evidently Hux does not: the colonel frowns so severely his eyes bulge and the vein in his temple threatens to burst. “ _Sanitation?_ ” demands Hux. Leaning back (and satisfied he doesn’t have to ask Phasma about it himself), Kylo thinks about all the reasons FN-2187 might be working such a low-level requirement. _He’s failed his final examinations despite his performances. His work ethic is lacking. He feuded with an officer. He—_

“It was FN-2187’s request to work sanitation,” says Phasma.

Hux seems to reach an impossible shade of blue on the holo while Kylo’s mind jumps into overdrive. “He _requested_ it?” says Hux, as if personally offended; Kylo has to stop himself from thinking horrible thoughts about the cadet Stormtrooper. Images of FN-2187 following Rey around the base as he cleans junk from every spot in the locker rooms; FN-2187 creeping around the Academy and cleaning the mess hall as she sits in the corner and eats quietly and away from the rest of the students; FN-2187—

“Yes. He requested it in order to . . . let another cadet have his position working with _you,_ Colonel Hux,” says Phasma. “Which is why you have FN-1048 assigned to you instead. She is fifth in the class.”

“Why did he let _another cadet_ be assigned to me?” At this point, Kylo’s absolutely certain that Hux is actually offended. “Does FN-2187 not realize the potential he has reporting directly to _me_?”

Phasma takes a deep breath before removing her helmet. The armor comes off smoothly and reveals a pale, stern face, light hair pressed against her head from its time under the helmet. “There is something else,” she adds, finally showing some concern on her face. Kylo leans forward in his seat, waiting for it—waiting for the obvious answer that FN-2187 is tailing his Padawan—

“He requested to work in sanitation after it was announced that one of his squad members, FN-2003—or, according to his squad, ‘Slip’—would be working in sanitation.” A long pause follows. “FN-2003 is near the bottom of the class.”

Hux curses and covers his face with a gloved hand. Kylo leans back into his chair again. Relief unfurls in his stomach, but now he’s plagued with another thought. “He’s concerned for his squad member,” he muses aloud, understanding it now. “What a pity.”

“Don’t make a joke of this, Ren,” snaps Hux, who looks awful. Every hair is out of place on his pretty little head now. “This is one of my men we’re talking about, and he’s holding affection for one of the lowest cadets in his class.”

Phasma shakes her head on the other side of the screen. The blue of the holo image shakes slightly as she does so—it tells Kylo that his shuttle will drop out of hyperdrive soon and he’ll be on the Forest Moon of Endor within the next half hour. “I would not worry about it, sir,” she says to Hux. “I am sure it is a one-time occurrence that will be forced out of him once his class graduates to the Finalizer to finish training and becomes true Stormtroopers.”

“I certainly hope so,” says Hux. “We’ll be keeping a very keen eye on him from now on.”

“And you’re certain that’s the full reason for his request?” Kylo inquires, standing from his seat. Phasma nods while Hux straightens his hair.

“It better be, otherwise he’ll be reevaluated,” says Hux bitterly. “A cadet at the top of his class should _not_ be working in sanitation, no matter what he should think about his squad members.”

The call ends with Hux furiously cutting it off, and both Hux and Phasma vanish from the holo with a snap of blue light. Kylo stands for a minute, thinking about the cadet, thinking about Rey. At least now he knows FN-2187 isn’t trailing after his Padawan, he notes—and then he recognizes the feeling as possessiveness, and he doesn’t even care anymore. He conveniently chooses to ignore the fact that he hasn’t reached out to her over their connection for the greater part of a year.

The more he thinks about her, though, the more he realizes that FN-2187 holds a greater threat than just a sanitation worker or a cadet. If what Phasma says about him is true—that FN-2187 holds dangerous traits that are supposed to be forced out of a cadet through First Order lessons in the academy as well as through Hux’s “programming”, then Kylo has another problem.

It’s very possible that Rey can learn from him. The light within her that Lord Snoke ordered to be _snuffed—_ no, if what Phasma and Hux fear about FN-2187 is true, then his achievements with Rey are in danger. All his work will have been for nothing. And one day, Rey will look at him with nothing but distrust, distaste in her young eyes. . . .

He’ll have to do something to fix that . . . such as fulfill what he’d promised to do for her. . . . Find her family and prove to her that he’s been working for her just as much as she’s been working for him, and she’ll love him, and—

The ship pulls out of hyperdrive.

It takes three minutes to locate the pyre of _Anakin Skywalker—_ Darth Vader is what Kylo strongly prefer. It takes five more to land on the surface of the Forest Moon of Endor near the pyre. It takes thirty minutes to bring his grandfather’s remains to light. Unearthing them reveals something that makes Kylo’s heart skip a beat, thump with adrenaline thereafter, and cause him to go deaf to everything his own harsh breathing behind his mask.

One of his Knights turns back to face him, her grip tightening on her weapon as she steps away from the remains of Darth Vader. Sitting atop the shrine is a singed helmet, warped from the flames in which it had bathed thirty years ago.

 _Grandfather, I’m here,_ he thinks, and suddenly he wants nothing more to speak to the man who will understand his loneliness and fear of the light like no one else will. He removes his glove, reaches out with a hand, feels his throat close as he imagines it.

When his hand wraps around the smooth melted surface of his grandfather’s helmet, he hears not the voice of Darth Vader, nor does he see the legendary Sith Lord himself.

He sees Obi-Wan Kenobi flash behind the pyre in a bright blue, looking at Kylo over his tinted shoulder, saddened, and the vision vanishes before Kylo can roar in fury, cry in betrayal, because he suddenly knows very clearly _who_ Rey’s family is and where they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just to be clear, rey has a little crush (which i think is pretty natural for girls her age), whereas kylo _doesn't_ , so i'm not making it creepy or anything. he still thinks of her as a little girl who's all roundfaced and who asks never-ending questions.
> 
> anyway, i don't have an illustration up for this chapter yet but there's one somewhere in the first chapter, so feel free to look at that if you haven't seen it. i'll add more illustrations when i get home from class.


	7. Year 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-six. Rey is fifteen.

 

“You really shouldn’t have,” says Rey, staring at the holobook in front of her. “Really! I have more than enough to do, and you don’t have to spend time showing me the things you learn for your training.”

“It’s only until you start your training again with Lord Ren,” says FN-2187, grinning broadly at her, and Rey wants nothing more than to hug him. “He’ll be back soon, I heard. Maybe within the next year. The higher-ups were talking about it.”

“The next year?”

“Yeah. But until then, you just keep training, and you can impress him the second he gets back!” FN-2187 assures her. “I can’t stay for long since my shift ends in twenty minutes, but maybe we can run through your staff forms again.”

Rey holds back a concerned look. Isn’t he worried about spending so much time with her? She’s never asked why he hasn’t been reprimanded about it—or maybe he _has_ been and he just hasn’t told her. “Hey, ’87?”

“What’s the matter?”

“Are you sure you’re allowed to be here with me so often?” she asks. “It’s been a year and you’ve been assigned to a bunch of different places on base, but you always make time to help me out. Don’t your superiors—”

FN-2187 nods. “Well, yes, I guess they didn’t like it. But something changed within the first month—they said something about Lord Ren ‘not caring’.” His words drop and he gives a shrug. “Which, if you ask me, is a little weird. You’d think he cares, you know? Not that he doesn’t care about _you_ ,” he adds hastily at Rey’s offended look, “but about the Stormtroopers and our training. He acts like we’re all just one massive headache. Isn’t that weird?”

“I suppose he’s always done things his own way,” says Rey, imagining all the times Kylo cursed General Hux into oblivion whenever the man turned his back.

“If you call his own way leaving his student alone for a year and a half to train by herself.”

“ _Really,_ it’s alright,” says Rey, touched by FN-2187’s words, but also disheartened slightly. “He’ll be back soon. Every time he’s left, he’s come back, and whenever he gets back we’ll finish my training, and he’ll be on his way and I guess I’ll just head back to Jakku.”

“Jakku?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you talking about, _Jakku_?”

Rey stares at him, long, puzzled.

“You can’t just leave,” says FN-2187, his voice lowering to a hush. “I’ve never heard of anyone leaving the First Order.”

“I’m not _part_ of the First Order. What are you talking about?”

“You’re Lord Ren’s apprentice,” says FN-2187, who looks so panicked Rey thinks she might have to fetch him some water. “ _He’s_ a Knight of Ren—no, he’s the Master of the Knights of Ren, and _they_ work with the First Order. He was literally trained by the Supreme Leader. You can’t get more First Order than that, Rey.”

Somehow, his voice has turned bitter, quiet with a tremor that is barely there. Rey’s eyes don’t leave his, searching him, wondering about the young man in front of her who is unlike _any_ of the other people she’s met on the base. After a long, terse moment, she whispers, “But I’ve been away from Jakku too long. My family could’ve come by. . . . I wouldn’t have been there to welcome them.”

“Rey, in the First Order, your only family is yourself,” says FN-2187, straightening.

In her bunk that night, Rey stares at the empty bunk above her and tries to keep the tears from leaking out the corners of her eyes. Has her time here on the base been wasted? For all she knows, her family has come to Jakku and left after being unable to find her. Worse, they might not have done that at all, and she’s been here on Starkiller Base, training for nothing as Kylo completes missions on the other side of the galaxy, his barriers on his end of their bond raised so high all she feels is numbness tinging half their connection. She doesn’t know when he’ll be back, but nonetheless she’s stuck here, unable to return to Jakku even _if_ Kylo doesn’t keep up his end of the promise.

Turning on her side, Rey lets the tally marks—the ones she’s stopped marking ever since she met FN-2187—haunt her until her eyelids slip closed.

 

* * *

 

When General Hux transmits his weekly report to Moraband, he brings along interesting news, news that fuels Kylo through his awful week. It’s evident Hux senses Kylo’s irritability through the call that he demands afterward.

“Pull your head out of your ass and stop talking to me like I don’t know what I’m doing,” snaps Hux as Kylo spits insults at the newest report. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Ren?”

“Wrong with me? General Hux, I think you have more than enough—”

“Stop throwing a temper tantrum. Stop complaining! You’ve been out of your mind for the past week ever since you went to Endor, and I won’t have it, neither will the Supreme Leader. And I will _not_ hesitate to mention your awful behavior—”

“—you’re gonna tattle on me, I see, you pathetic piece of—”

 “—and I will _not_ deal with your childish and reprehensible—”

“ _Fuck you,_ ” Kylo snarls and shuts the call off, breathing heavily and trying not to see red; he stands, stumbling to the side, holding his head in agony streaks through it, visions flying through his mind, white, black pain. His world tilts upside down as he keens over, ripping the mask from his head as quickly as he can before his knees collapse and he nearly hits his forehead against the console.  
Howling, Kylo doesn’t see the inside of the room anymore. No more durasteel and dark, sharp corners, but blinding sunlight and a vision of the Force ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi helping a little toddler walk through dirt and small, short blades of grass. The vision comes in increments, flashing in between his eyes as he tries to shove it away from his mind. _What are you telling me, Grandfather?_ he thinks viciously, trying to push the vision away. _She can’t be his, she can’t be his—he’s dead, she’s mine, she’s—  
_

But he knows, deep down despite his denial, that Rey is a beacon of untouchable light, that she reigns from Obi-Wan Kenobi, that the light inside her won’t ever be extinguished because that’s her, it’s who she is, it’s who she’ll always be. If there’s dark within her, it’s pure and balanced. If there’s light, it’s inextinguishable.

Kylo wishes _desperately_ that it weren’t true, because—because all his effort will have been for nothing. Training this girl for the Dark Side—making her completely and utterly his creation, and yet she’s so bright in this vision that he knows she’ll never be completely Dark.

 _But she’ll never be completely Light, either,_ says a horrible little voice in Kylo’s head as he rocks on the floor, keeping pathetic whimpers from leaving his mouth. _If she were, she’d never be tempted by the power of the Dark Side that you fed her. . . ._

He places flat palms against the floor, heaving himself up, vision swimming in black as his heart starts to thrum a little slower. Seconds pass and he’s pulling himself on a chair like a wounded child, gasping, holding his head.

The worst part about this vision is that it’s been occurring several times every day, plaguing him like a never-ending nightmare. It’s why his Knights have been more wary around him. Not timid, but afraid to light a spark in his swirling head. Because every once in a while he’ll turn his head, see _Obi-fucking-Wan Kenobi,_ and experience the darkest of pain push through his mind as he struggles to fight against the light of the vision.

Even worse yet is how he’s supposed to tell Rey.

He can never bring himself to do it—can’t drop the barriers, can’t let her see. Because what will happen? She’ll hate him forever. Her eyes will deaden when she hears that there aren’t any more Kenobis except for her, and she’ll blame him for taking her away from Jakku where she might’ve lived peacefully, albeit poorly, and she’ll never see him like she did when he first took her off of the desert junk planet.

“Selfish prick,” mutters Hux an hour later when Kylo manages to calm down again to listen to another report. Kylo hates the man but he hates the fact that his words ring horribly with truth in his closed, dark, haunted head.

 

* * *

 

Rey’s priority now is to leave. Somehow.

There’s only a month left until FN-2187 has to leave for the Finalizer. She’s thought about it in the long weeks since FN-2187 told her about her being unable to return to Jakku. But where else is she going to go? The moment he leaves, she’ll be back to having no one to speak to, no one to take her mind off the cold end of the connection between her and her teacher. FN-2187 is necessary to her right now, maybe always, until she can find a way to get out.

Rey doesn’t tell this to her cadet friend, though. He doesn’t need to know; she’s already figured out that he’s under too watchful an eye for her to involve him in something so . . . so . . . treacherous. She doesn’t know what _he_ think about her leaving the base, but maybe she can at least enlist his help in getting her halfway there.

It’s also why she’s been trying to find a way to the fighter planes.

FN-2187 looks suspicious when she shows up the next day in front of the training room with a fighter pilot’s helmet. “ _Uh,_ ” he begins, unclasping the braces around his arms for more flexibility, “why do you have that?”

“I’m going to take a ship up, that’s why,” says Rey, beaming at him before slipping the helmet on her head. “What do you think?”

“What do I _think_? Rey, you aren’t allowed to do that. . . .”

“Even more of a reason,” says Rey, and she doesn’t even bother hiding the contempt from her voice. This base is suffocating her. She can’t escape the feeling of black shadows pressing over her shoulders and around her mind, and she feels like FN-2187 might finally understand, if she just _asks_ him. “I’ll get authorization to learn how to pilot one of those TIE-fighters. I’ve been wanting to do it for a long time.”

“And what if you don’t get it?”

“I’ll just follow you to the Finalizer, then,” says Rey simply, and FN-2187 chokes.

He levels her with squinted eyes and a large, downturned mouth. “ _No,_ ” he says. “Don’t joke about stuff like that. Do you know how _mad_ Captain Phasma and General Hux and _Lord Ren—_ ”

 _Lord Ren_ , for crying out loud. “What can he do? He’s been gone for almost two years. He doesn’t talk to me. He doesn’t care! I _need_ to go back to Jakku and find my family.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing,” says Rey sourly. “I just know they’re waiting for me, and I need to get back, alright?”

“Rey,” says FN-2187, exhaling long and slow before he holds his hands up. “Look. I admire your optimism about your family. But you have a life away from that planet.”

“Yes, with my family!”

“ _No_ , with your training!” says FN-2187, looking pained. His voice lowers so much she has to lean in to hear him. “Rey, you might not call the First Order family, but . . . to those of us who grew up in squads and formations, it’s all we know, alright?”

Suddenly Rey’s stomach drops and she has to force away an apology. But it doesn’t mean she can’t go back to Jakku. . . .

“And,” he continues, “to be fair, no matter how much you complain about Lord Ren, I know you want to see him once before you make any decisions.”

He’s so right it hurts. She _does_ want to see Kylo. No matter how furious she is at his absence, both physically and in her mind over their connection, she wants him back so she can show him everything she’s learned. She wants to impress him, after all, and at least she knows he’ll be back, someday. But her family. . . .

“Do you think you can wait a bit longer?” says FN-2187 finally. Rey breaks out of the trance she’s in and nods, silent and thinking very hard about when Kylo might come back, what she’ll say or not say, and what he’ll think of her.

FN-2187 places a hand on her shoulder. “Y’know, at first I didn’t really think I’d have fun working sanitation as a grad requirement,” he tells her. “But you really made it worth it.”

As he leaves after their small session, Rey tries for the first time in months to reach Kylo.

His connection tingles.

Rey has to kill the smile from showing on her cheeks, has to kill the urge to run down the hall between ‘troopers, has to kill the need to curl up on her cot with a flipping stomach.

 

* * *

 

She tries reaching Kylo at the worst possible time. He figures it out after another painful vision with _Obi-Wan Kenobi_ and it takes all his effort to push her away. He screams obscenities at no one in particular, stumbling down the hallway, trying not to flush everything out with a slash of his lightsaber.

“Sir, you have an urgent message from Lieutenant Mitaka—” says a captain manning the control dock of the new base on Moraband, and Kylo screams a very polite _“FUCK OFF!”_ as he crashes into the doorway. He claws at his helmet and struggles to open the door at the same time before he manages to get inside the empty conference room.

The captain follows him, looking a little concerned. “Shall I send for—”

“What part of _fuck off_ did you not understand, _Captain_?”

The door shuts in the captain’s face.

He doesn’t know how long it is before there’s a harsh, nervous rap on the door and he yanks it open, his head numb with pain behind his mask as the vision fades. Irritable, ready to spark, he snarls, “ _What,_ Lieutenant?”

The earlier captain is standing with Lieutenant Mitaka at his side, who looks as if Kylo is about to take his neck and snap it in two; he’s sorely tempted to go through with it. Mitaka stands as straight as a board, sweating in his high collared uniform. “S-Supreme Leader Snoke would like to—wishes to—speak with you, s-sir.”

“Do you speak to all your commanding officers with a stuttering tongue, Lieutenant? Maybe burning it off would help!”

Mitaka blanches and steps away. Kylo withholds a snap and a childish retort. Ever since the visions have started—since he’d brought his grandfather’s helmet back from the pyre on the Forest Moon of Endor to Moraband—he’s been on edge, ready to send something flying. He feels muddled. Nothing is clear. Everything is grey, painful in its indecision. With a grunt and a sidestep around the shorter lieutenant, Kylo stomps away and heads for the chamber where his master will soon be permanently placed.

For now, there’s a holo in the massive high-tiered dark chamber, but the Dark is still as present as ever; it swarms around him like a liquid and he downs it, drinks it in as it pushes the pain of the visions away and replaces it with power, tension. He can deal with that. He can deal with that. . . .

“I want you,” says Snoke after several minutes of confirming training progress with Kylo, “to return back to Starkiller Base.”

Kylo feels his heart jump into his throat. Apparently, so does Snoke. “You feel conflicted,” breathes the holo of his master, leaning so forward his great, demented grey face fills Kylo’s vision. “Why?”

“The base here on Moraband is not finished, Supreme Leader,” says Kylo. His stomach clenches in anticipation. Around his mind is the probe of dark and light, and suddenly he feels—muddled, again, and _painful_ after so long without use— _lo? Kylo?_

Snoke suddenly frowns.

Kylo shoves the barriers as high as possible and feels his end of their bond shake as he does so. He says nothing, grateful for the mask on his face, though it probably doesn’t matter. Snoke straightens and furls a fist against the arm of his throne. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

His master _hmm_ s, not taking an eye off him for a solid five minutes, holding Kylo in place and shutting him inside his own mind despite not even being in the chamber in person. “Are you _sure?_ ” says Snoke softly, very softly, almost inaudible if it weren’t for the deathly silence in the grand hall.

“Yes,” repeats Kylo, his voice managing to withstand a crack. _Don’t find her. Don’t find her. Don’t find her._

Another minute passes and Snoke raises the heel of his palm, bringing it to his chin. “You will return to Starkiller Base and pass the cadets along to the Finalizer with General Hux,” says Snoke. “And you will begin to train your student once more. I daresay she’ll be happy to see you again after so long, hm?”

Kylo hopes so, very much, but he won’t say that.

Later on in the day, he sits at the edge of his bed with his head in his hands, long legs pressed so hard into the floor his shins begin to tingle. He’s going back to Starkiller after nearly two years of not speaking to his own Padawan. He’s scared. Scared of what will happen when he sees her, scared of what will happen when _she_ sees _him._ The vision? What if she takes one look at him and sees the fallen Kenobis? What if she takes one look at him and decides that his efforts were a waste?

He’s so scared.

 

* * *

 

“You can’t do this,” hisses FN-2187 over the comm as she shoves the helmet onto her head and slips into the cockpit. “You’re going to be put into reconditioning. _I’m_ going to be put into reconditioning.”

“Just sit down and watch your propaganda videos,” she says. “Besides, you’ll be fine. It’s not like you’re telling me to do it. It’s my choice to take a TIE fighter up! They can’t punish you for what I did.”

He mutters something about her optimism again as she breathes out slowly, closes her eyes and thinks. When her eyes open, she recalls her simulator. _This is it._ “I can do this,” she says, her hands moving into muscle memory. “I can do this.”

“Rey, _really_ —”

But she doesn’t hear her friend anymore. Once she’s prepped the fighter, her head pounds with adrenaline and she can hardly keep the proud smile off her face. She detaches from the port within a few minutes amidst FN-2187’s warnings. “I can’t look at this anymore,” he groans over the comm. “And I clearly can’t stop you, so I’m heading to the mess hall. Please, _please_ don’t get yourself in trouble, Rey!”

“I’ll meet you later!” She laughs into the comm and presses the TIE fighter forward.

The world seems to explode in chaos. Suddenly, Stormtroopers on the ground of the dock are aiming at her, but Rey can’t seem to find it in her to care. They’re just obstacles, just like in her simulator, just like what she’d trained herself to avoid in her sleep. She can do this. She can do this!

“REY! Come ON!”

There’s a blast that whizzes past the TIE fighter on her starboard side and she pushes the tip of her tongue out from between her lips, getting the feel for the maneuver. It’s light, flies much faster than the older version on her simulator, and it responds to every slightest touch, but this feeling is _home_ to her. Suddenly, the thought of leaving is possible. She has a TIE fighter. She can leave. It’s just Jakku, she can—

—a ventral cannon shot into the side of the TIE fighter makes her shriek as suddenly the adrenaline skyrockets out of her stomach and into her mouth in fear; the ship sinks, twirls, crashes into the dock as Stormtroopers swarm around the destroyed ship.

All in the matter of seven or eight minutes.

FN-2187 is still talking to her on the comm. General Hux is there, he says. General Hux doesn’t care what Lord Ren thinks, he says. General Hux is taking her for reconditioning, he says.

 _No, no, no no no no_ runs through Rey’s head as she climbs out of the damaged TIE fighter. She peers up at the control dock, sees FN-2187 holding the commlink in one hand and nodding silently. The ‘troopers don’t touch her but they move to the side, parting for Captain Phasma, who stares straight down at her from her metal helmet and says tersely, “Come with me. _Now._ ”

 

* * *

 

“I’ve asked for permission to learn how to pilot for months!” she exclaims, finally fed up with Hux and Phasma, the former who looks as red as the First Order flag. “There are students younger than me who’ve taken ships up dozens of times. I should at least—”

“Reconditioning will do your insubordinate mind a favor!” says Hux. He’s the picture of orderly dishevelment and Rey hates it. The only thing wrong with him is how much he resembles a fresh tomato from the mess hall.

“I’m not going _anywhere,_ Kylo said I could—”

“ _Lord Ren_ is your master, not your friend or your parent or anyone familiar!” snarls Hux. Finally, to Rey’s pleasure, he looks frazzled. He takes a deep breath and stares long and hard at her with his nose wrinkled just enough to make her want to slam a staff into it. Straightening his uniform, he says, “Reconditioning, effective immediately. I don’t care what Ren has to say. You are a danger to our cadets. FN-2187 is a cadet at the top of his class and he is already working in _sanitation_ because of such dangerous thoughts. Reconditioning. Captain Phasma, take her to the South Wing.”

“No!” Rey shrieks, pulling away from Phasma, but she isn’t quick enough and Phasma’s so tall she might as well be fighting with a tree from the woods. “NO! You can’t make me, you didn’t tell Kylo, you—”

“I don’t need to tell _Lord Ren_ anything!” Hux shouts right back, finally losing whatever cool he has left. Others in the room turn their heads, surprised to hear this, surprised to see Hux shouting at a fifteen year old. “He’ll be back in three weeks and you’ll be perfectly conditioned by then to finish your training for Supreme Leader Snoke! Say goodbye to your sparring sessions, _scavenger_. You won’t be returning to Jakku any—time— _soon._ ”

She hasn’t been called a scavenger in such a long time that it stuns her into silence. In the fifteen minutes it takes to reach the South Wing, she’s lost track of the number of times she pulls at Kylo’s end of the bond.

 

* * *

 

They take the best parts of Rey and use every single one of them against her. Where she once dreamed of piloting, she’s placed in a room with a repeated holo of her crashing and ruining the TIE fighter. At first she thinks of it proudly. But they show it to her a hundred times a day and soon she begins to lose her mind with it. If only she’d been better. If only she’d taken it farther than she had. If only she’d managed to leave, she wouldn’t be here. If only she’d had proper experience. If only she weren’t just a scavenger—

They take those thoughts and carve them out with a knife, and though they can’t peer into her mind, they certainly succeed in quieting her. It’s nowhere near as bad as Snoke had been when he had first looked into her mind two years ago. But she’d had Kylo then, whereas now Kylo’s abandoned her and she can’t get back to Jakku. FN-2187 is gone somewhere. Probably on the Finalizer, not in reconditioning if he’s lucky. Her optimism begins to wane; at least, on Jakku, there’d been a chance. No one on Jakku knows she’s on Starkiller. No one can point her family in the direction of the First Order base. And Kylo is gone, and so is her cadet friend, and Kylo’s end of the bond is colder than it’s ever been.

Eventually her only solution to get away from the loneliness, the shame, the _agony_ of it all is to succumb to the growing shadows in her head. Something inside her shatters as she does it, but she needs to do it. Otherwise she’ll die here. Otherwise she’ll never find her family. She needs to be powerful, experienced enough to get out of here on her own terms. She needs power. The First Order has it. . . . She can get it with time. . . .

_. . . your first steps. . . ._

Rey banishes the light to a corner she’ll never, ever find it.

 

* * *

 

“Welcome back, Lord Ren,” says Captain Phasma as Kylo exits the shuttle. Kylo gives her a terse nod as he steps away, allowing ‘troopers and his Knights to enter the East Wing, and once they’re gone, Captain Phasma hands him a datapad. “Here are final reports from the cadets graduating to the Finalizer, sir. Perhaps it would be best to go over them prior to tomorrow’s ceremony.”

“I look forward to it,” he says dully, tucking the datapad away. “Captain, I’d like to see my student. She’s still at the Academy, correct?”

“No, sir,” says Phasma. Is it just him, or does he detect the slightest pause? The slightest tremor in her voice? “She has been relocated.”

“And who decided to relocate her without my knowledge?”

“I am not authorized to say, sir.”

“Captain, I outrank nearly everyone in this facility. I won’t ask again. Where is my student?”

Phasma takes a very long time answering. When Kylo’s hand hovers over his lightsaber, she says, “The South Wing, sir.”

There are only three things in the South Wing. Repairs, pipes and sewage maintenance, and reconditioning. “Which part of it, Captain?” he says dangerously, slowly, his fingers wrapping around the hilt of his ‘saber.

“I am not authorized to—”

“ _Which part, Captain?”_

“Sir, I must insist—”

“It was _Hux_ , wasn’t it?” snaps Kylo, and when the split second of Phasma’s silence confirms it, he ignites the plasma blade and sears through the nearest piece of glass. It does nothing to alleviate the fury swirling in his gut. “He sent her to the South Wing. To reconditioning! What did she do, Captain? What did she do?”

“I am not—”

“ _I outrank General Hux, Captain, and you will tell me—”_

Phasma remains loyally silent until she says, words rolling off her tongue and igniting the flame in Kylo’s head, “You may wish to inquire this of Supreme Leader Snoke, sir.”

He doesn’t have time to think about Snoke or the fact that Hux got _permission_ to put Rey in reconditioning. He doesn’t have time to think about how Snoke never once told him about their decision. He only has time to get to the South Wing, and he does it so quickly that by the time he’s reached the well-hidden, dreaded door to the reconditioning facility, his head swims as he attempts to catch his breath.

The doors to the facility open to problem. It’s dark, filled with the deep tremor of the Dark Side that stoops low over all the members of the First Order on base who’ve stepped out of line. They don’t know it’s there, but it acts on everyone, flows through everything.

Slowly, Kylo lowers the barriers around his end of the connection, expecting a light at the end of the bond, a light at the end of the tunnel.

It isn’t there.

All that remains is a flicker and a gash against her end of the bond. It’s dark. Screams of betrayal and shame. It screams _Kylo_ but her voice is very, very silent.

At the end of the hall is Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for once the sight of him doesn’t make Kylo fall to his knees with white hot agony. The ghost of the Jedi flickers, fades, but not before staring forlornly at a door of durasteel in front of him. Then he vanishes, never there to the others in the room. Only to Kylo.

“Open the door.” He doesn’t recognize the voice that escapes his helmet. The guards open the door to the room without a word.

A chair in the middle of the room faces away from him, but he can barely make out the top of a brown-haired head. But before he can step around it to see her, truly again for the first time in years, a voice from the side says, “I was wondering when you’d come.” And Hux steps around toward the front of the chair, staring up at him from the back of where she’s strapped into. “I was just about to release her. She’s made wonderful progress. . . . I think you’d agree.”

His feet move too quickly for his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this took so long but i just recently got the newest fire emblem games and, honestly, i've been playing those. my bad. 
> 
> but, uh, anyway--it's out, and i can't WAIT to get the next chapter out for you guys, because chapter 8 is so important!! ahaahhhhhahaha. enjoy!


	8. Year 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-seven. Rey is sixteen.

There is, perhaps, not a moment more like this one for which Kylo is more thankful for the mask over his face. He feels his lips curl, his throat clench at the sight of the unrecognizable girl strapped into the chair with Hux at her side, looking triumphant at the way her eyes stare coldly at the wall in front of her. Hux says something—it passes through Kylo’s ears, unheard, until he sees the locks around her limbs unclasp.

“Lord Ren is here to see you,” says Hux, smiling. “Are you ready to return to your training?”

“Yes, sir,” says Rey, and Kylo’s head blurs, fuzzes until he sees Obi-Wan behind Hux, head in his hands.

Then she turns her eyes on Kylo. “Welcome back, Master.”

Kylo’s at an absolute loss of words; he had imagined for the longest time that he would return to Starkiller and Rey would be absolutely the same. Bright-eyed and excited. Following him around, demanding him to take her up into a fighter jet even as she grew older. Eagerly waiting for him to teach her something new, soaking the information up into her smaller hands.

But the girl—no, she’s no girl, she’s very clearly a young woman—looks at him not the way he’s feared for the past two years, but much worse. With indifference. As if he’s a means to an end. And he thinks he might know what end that is.

He doesn’t want to try anything through their bond with Hux in the room. “Get out,” he says to Hux.

“ _What_ did you say to me, Ren?”

“Get out,” says Kylo again, his helmet turning to the general. “Unless you’d like me to remove you myself, I would suggest saving yourself the pain.”

Hux gives him the nastiest look possible, nostrils flaring as he inhales and keeps himself calm. “You’re not strong enough to—”

“General, I’ve spent two years on Moraband training to find Luke Skywalker and kill him. I’ve spent countless hours preparing my Knights to find other potential Jedi and to terminate them, as well. I would strongly reconsider your actions around me.”

Gritted teeth, tight fists at his sides. “Don’t overestimate yourself, Ren. . . .” And he leaves, the door sliding shut behind him and resonating around Kylo and Rey.

The mask immediately becomes suffocating and drags all the air out of his mouth as he thinks quickly of what to say to her and how to say it, but he suddenly can’t do it straight, can’t think properly as he processes her for the first time. Taller, limber with poise, which bemuses him. She steps to the side of the chair, eyes him silently, takes her time in assessing him, and the way she does it is calculative and _terrifying,_ with her eyes roaming from his head to his shoulders to the belt around his stomach, curving down his legs and to his boots, and he needs to say something but he _doesn’t know what to say._

“You’re back,” she says finally.

Kylo starts. Her voice is lower, harsher with something he doesn’t know how to pinpoint. It’s almost as if he’s meeting a totally new person for the first time, and before he knows it, he reaches up to the helmet and presses on the slots behind his ears; it unclasps and lets air in for him to breathe and his head clears.

When it’s off, he sets it to the side, meets Rey’s eyes again. Unfiltered. Her brows fold in the middle, nearly unnoticeable, but he sees it. And he sees everything else. The definition of her jaw, the slimming of her waist, the curve of her cheekbones and the way the coat’s arms do nothing to hide the muscle years of training has put on her. Evidently, she’s been hard at work while he was gone.

“I’m back,” Kylo replies after a long moment, quiet.

“How was Moraband?”

“Dry. Difficult.” The red expanse of mountainous land fills his head.

“And very red,” Rey says.

“Yes,” he agrees, and he moves toward her both through his feet and through his mind, stopping just before her to survey her closely. He extends the thought over their connection with a slim tendril. She hesitates, stares up at him.

Then, to his utter shock, she pulls away, and she looks very unhappy as she does it. “When will I start training with you again, Master?”

Kylo winces, locks his eyes on hers; her hands lay calmly at her sides, not searching for something to fiddle with, not looking for something to pull apart. “Master?” he parrots, voice high.

“Yes. I _must_ finish my training.” She’s obviously very irritated with him, at the fact that they aren’t getting down to work immediately. Kylo runs a hand in his hair, pulls at it, tries to keep his frustration low, but it isn’t working. He’s processing so many things, the way she exudes grace from even the standard grey reconditioning outfit. The way she regards him with something that borders on predatory. The way she stays away from him like he’ll hurt her, even though she demands for his training. . . .

“Rey, I—”

“Don’t,” she says, and a flicker later her eyes meet the ground before shutting. “You’ve been gone too long. I’ve learned better now.”

“Learned better—?”

“That’s right. General Hux has offered me a lot of insight in my position here at the First Order, as your student. I’ve learned about what I should be doing, and once I’ve done it, I can find my family.”

 _There_ it is, the thing Kylo’s been dreading the entire time, and he should’ve known it was the underlying thing behind the entire reconditioning. He should’ve known it. “HUX!” he bellows. Rey, stunned, jerks backward as his head veers to the door. “HUX, GET IN THIS ROOM _RIGHT NOW!_ ”

“You shouldn’t speak to—”

“ _I’m doing this for your own sake, Rey!”_ Kylo yells right back at her. His hair is wild, he knows it, and his feet are plastered in place through his boots and against the floor. “Your—your _family—_ ” He can’t say it, fuck! “This _isn’t how you should be looking for them! HUX!”_

The door beeps open, revealing a straight-as-a-rod ‘Trooper behind it, who says tightly, “Sir, General Hux is not here.”

“ _Where did he go?”_

“He just left for Sup—”

“ _Get out of my way,_ ” he snarls, before his arm latches around Rey’s wrist and pulls, expecting obedience; she doesn’t move, instead pulls him back, and Kylo stumbles as his boots catch against her grey robes. She’s no longer the little girl who was so easy to order around—

“My training!” she says, eyes flashing. Kylo’s stomach leaps into his throat at the way she stares at him. Like he has no other purpose than to give her time of day.

“After I get my answers out of that little rat,” says Kylo, breathing heavily through his nose, eyes trailing the wisps of hair escaping her bun (when did she have only one bun?), over the sculpt of her high cheekbones.

“You never found my family,” she tells him, cold. “You owe me my training. I’ll find them myself when we’ve finished. The faster I get to it, the faster I get to leave so you’ll never have to deal with me again.”

The words stick with him so sourly that he has to take a moment to forget about Hux, to think about _her_ and the years during which he’d left her on the base, during which he’d been holed away on Moraband. But the worst part is the last sentence—because at once he sees it, the crack in her façade, the beg of the girl she used to be, someone who depended solely on herself. _You’ll never be able to leave,_ he thinks to himself, though if she bothers to reach over their connection, he’s sure she’ll hear him.

“Rey,” he says, and then he sees Obi-Wan Kenobi step out from behind her with raised eyebrows. “You will finish your training. But I’ll be damned if I don’t fucking blast Hux in the face. _Now come on!”_

Obi-Wan hovers a hand over her shoulder, brows drawn as if in thought, but Rey notices nothing; he drops his hand, shuts his eyes, and finally opens his mouth to speak.

 _“There’s too much Dark in her right now,_ ” he says. _“The balance in her . . . is completely thrown off. I had tried for years to keep this from happening . . . years spent guiding her through Jakku. She didn’t know I was there. Just as she doesn’t know now.”_ He steps in front of his granddaughter, looking over his shoulder at Kylo, whose eyes are still locked onto those of his student’s.

“What is it?” says Rey, frowning. “I thought you were going to ‘blast Hux in the face’. Or did you change your mind?”

“No,” says Kylo through gritted teeth. “Change of plans. Stay here. I’ll blast him myself.” At least now he knows she won’t be by herself in this room. As much as he detests his namesake, Obi-Wan Kenobi has been looking out for her for a long time—and he can look after her for a little longer.

He tears away, leaves his end of the connection open, feels what once used to be warmth on her end shrink away into shadow. Obi-Wan is still with her. Always has been. From Jakku to her time on Starkiller. . . . With her, perhaps, while she went through the Academy. And yet he showed himself to Kylo when Kylo laid hands on his grandfather’s remains, the man who knew Obi-Wan Kenobi like an older brother, almost like a father.

 

* * *

 

He has Hux slammed against the floor in a matter of two seconds when Kylo finds him striding toward the Supreme Leader’s holo chambers; red, hot fury soaks through his bones as he reaches out, feels for the training he did with his knights over the past two years, and _pulls._ Hux falters, eyes shooting over his shoulder toward Kylo, who sees nothing but red through his helmet—

“I don’t suppose you’ve come to congratulate me,” snarls Hux, and Kylo rewards him with the Force wrapping around his chest. Hux grunts, tilts his head back, and gives Kylo the nastiest look he’s seen in years.

“ _You did something unforgivable,_ ” says Kylo, teeth bared behind his mask—Hux chokes out a snicker. “You touched what was mine.”

“She was never _yours,_ ” says Hux, voice rasping. “Think what you want. She was—too far gone.”

“Too far _gone?_ ” What the hell does that mean? He unclasps the mask, lets it topple in a clang to the floor as he suddenly needs to breathe.

“Your little _scavenger_ has her own plans, Ren!” yells Hux suddenly, managing to shove Kylo away as Kylo’s head reels with disbelief. “She has her own plans,” wheezes the general, “and Supreme Leader has _his_ own plans for her. You were gone too long. She tried to escape. I was left with no choice but to send her to reconditioning, of which Lord Snoke _approved!_ ”

“She’s lost sight of me—”

“You, you, everything’s always about you! There is a bigger _order_ here than _you_! And she is a part of it! You’ll have to answer to her soon, Ren, because she _will_ be stronger than you. And we’ll reap it,” Hux adds, lips stretching ever so slightly as his nose wrinkles at Kylo. “We’ll reap her gain for all it’s worth.”

The next words remain unsaid, but Kylo knows them anyway: _Just like we reaped your own._

His fingers curl, each finger pressing tighter into the heel of his palm than the previous one; his arm draws back, the Force curling around his knuckles like a well-coiled spring. Hux is too triumphant to bother pulling away and Kylo’s fist launches into the other man’s nose, a sickening crunch going through both of Kylo’s ears and making him nauseous, because it does absolutely nothing to make him feel better.

Hux holds his nose after, sneering, laughing all at once, looking more victorious than ever. Kylo wants to punch him again, except Hux dodges the next one, and the next, and the next. Obviously he’d let Kylo have the first blow. “Face it, Ren. She’s not yours anymore.”

“She was never _yours!_ ”

“Who said anything about mine?” says Hux, lifting the hand from his nose, looking at the blood in his hands before he covers it up again. “She’s Lord Snoke’s. _I_ don’t want her. What good have I for some dirty scavenger rat?”

And just as Hux pulls his own fist back, he freezes in place and his eyes go as wide as Kylo’s ever seen them. “Shit!” he strains through clenched teeth as his feet struggle to move, as he struggles to land his knuckles in the same gift Kylo gave him only a minute earlier. But Kylo has the Force on him now, keeping him locked and several inches away. In fact, it only seems to take only half the effort.

Hux’s eyes catch onto something behind Kylo, and then Kylo feels it, the Force answering to two people. Not just one. Because behind him is Rey, who keeps one hand outstretched, both her eyes on Hux.

“This dirty scavenger rat certainly doesn’t want to be anyone’s, General Hux,” says Rey. “And it would do you well not to speak poorly of Lord Ren.”

In the cold light of the hallway, in the dark garb that makes his stomach turn and jump all at once, in the stance she’s taken with feet spread confidently and her arm raised level to the floor with poise that only could’ve taken years to accomplish—she looks very much like a deity, one to whom Kylo is much too afraid to speak. Where is the child he left on the base two years ago? A sense of self-loathing runs through him like nothing he’s ever experienced before. He _had_ her. He had her as his own, someone who _wanted_ him, and yet here she is now—and she doesn’t need him, does she? He lost her, just like he loses everything in his damn life—

“Let him go, Master,” says Rey to Kylo as she drops her hand. “He’s still an important commander in the First Order.”

He feels the Force beckon at her call, pulling from Hux as he wretches away from the weaker hold. Feeling sourer than ever, Kylo snatches his helmet from the floor and quickly clasps it around his head. He doesn’t need to be shamed any longer than he already has.

“My training,” she says to Kylo. Behind her is Obi-Wan Kenobi, who says nothing.

Kylo leaves Hux with a bleeding, broken nose on the floor of the hallway.

 

* * *

 

Rey keeps up with his steps easily, despite still being quite shorter in height than him. But her legs are long. He can’t stop looking at her, terrified at how time flies. No longer pure in heart and mind—her light, which had kept her from bending toward the true meaning of the First Order for a long time, is finally tainted.

And Kylo hates it.

It had been everything he’d wanted for her to be part of the Dark Side. He picked her up from Jakku when she was nine for that very reason. She was to be his apprentice, and the second apprentice to Lord Snoke, and she was to be _his_ , but she isn’t. She’s Snoke’s. Never his. Nothing is ever his, so why would she be?

She can claim that she is no one’s, but Kylo knows the truth. Her youth makes her strong and her heritage makes her stronger. She is Lord Snoke’s until Snoke decides he is done with her, or until she is ripped from Snoke’s hands.

Kylo stops in front of the training chambers, hand over the keypad.

“What is it?” Rey comes to a stop behind him, and though she asks the words patiently, she’s clearly annoyed.

Ripped from Snoke’s hands. . . .

 _No_ , he thinks to himself vehemently, shoving the thought away as best he can. What is he _thinking_? The very notion is disgusting to him, makes his head hurt like no other. And how can he possibly doubt the Supreme Leader, who has given him everything, for a little scavenger—

—but she isn’t a little scavenger, is she? She’s far more than that, a force to be reckoned with at her age. He doesn’t know what she was like before her time in reconditioning. All he knows is that she’s been reconditioned, and she’s been in there for several weeks. It’s more than enough time to change her thoughts. Most reconditioning is short . . . painful, but short nonetheless. In some exceptional cases, reconditioning doesn’t work and the subject is kept in reconditioning for a longer amount of time. Out of contact with any others who might bring their traitorous actions to light. And Kylo’s made it no better over the past two years when his connection with her was clamped shut.

Shame creeps over the back of his neck. “Nothing,” he replies finally, keying the code in. “Just go in. We’ll start with what you’ve learned during my absence.”

She’s learned a lot. She’s taught herself mind tricks, tested it out on several Stormtroopers in the hallway when she mentions it. She knows how to fight phenomenally with a staff, but she mentions nothing about how she learned it or—and Kylo thinks she might’ve forgotten—her time with FN-2187. Rey knows Force levitation—it comes naturally to her—and she is quick conjure a spark of Force lightning. She’s much further along than Kylo original thought.

“So?” she says, when she sets her staff to the side. “What can I improve upon, Master?”

“Don’t call me that,” he says tightly. “And I need to think about it. I don’t have a lesson plan yet.”

Rey frowns.

“What would _you_ like to work on?” he says instead, opting to sit several paces away from her.

“Freezing,” she says immediately. “Like what you had done on General Hux.”

“Have you done it before?”

“No. That was my first time.”

“You were good at it,” says Kylo. “For your first time.” This conversation is killing him. He wants the other Rey. The one who asked him seemingly meaningless questions. The one who wanted his knowledge for the sake of wanting, not for any other sake.

Rey normally would have beamed at him for the compliment. This Rey looks frustrated. “I could have been better.”

“It was good for no experience—”

“I need all the strength I can get to find my family,” says Rey. “What would you know?”

 _This isn’t right,_ he thinks to himself desperately. The more he feels the walls drawn around her end of the bond, the more he ashamed he is; it’s his fault, his fucking fault. Everything backfires on him. Everything does, and he needs to fix it, or else he’ll never be able to live with himself—wrecking the one thing in his life that seemed to like him. “Rey, your family—”

“Do you know something?” she demands.

A beat.

“No,” he lies. Halfway to make her lower her barriers. Halfway because he’s a damn coward.

Rey doesn’t lower her barriers. Instead they seem to tighten.

 

* * *

 

Nighttime, the first night he is back from Moraband, is filled with night terrors of Obi-Wan Kenobi and his little Rey. Even the dimness and familiarity of his chambers doesn’t do enough to keep him asleep. Instead he keeps dreaming of Force Ghosts and little Reys chasing him around with staves. He dreams about sand that seeps into his shoes and how much he hates it, but also how much he misses it, and the feeling is so surreal to him that he realizes he’s seeing Rey’s dreams, too.

Reconditioning has not touched her sleep, it seems, and he feels relief so deep he almost loses sight of her on the island in her dreams. She’s humming to herself, the same age as she is when awake, but happy. When he appears over her shoulder, she leans against his feet and tilts her head all the way back to meet his eyes.

“I missed you,” she says. Her hands are covered in dirt. Smudges of dirt are on her cheek. Seeing his inquisitive look, she raises one hand and says, “I like to pretend it’s sand sometimes.” She exhales, still peering at him upside-down. “I used to hate sand.”

“I hate sand,” he says automatically.

“I miss it,” she says wistfully. “But I like the grass and the snow. Do you think my family is waiting for me on Jakku?”

“No,” he says, completely honest. “Can I sit?”

She leans forward again and scoots to the side; he folds his legs somewhat awkwardly beneath him, still enormously long beside her but she’s nowhere near as small as she once was. When he looks back up at her, she’s looking away with a flush on her face. “What is it?” he asks, suddenly self-conscious.

“I’m cold.” Dirt slips through her fingers again. It gets in her nails and doesn’t bother him in the least. At some point he would have been annoyed at the uncleanliness of all of it . . . but he can’t help but love it, love the dirt that sits on her hands, love the way she pokes her tongue out as she ties knots in the short blades of grass. It's familiar.

Kylo moves to take his cloak off, but Rey shakes her head. “I’ve been cold for a long time." She shudders. “I don’t really remember what being warm is like. I miss Jakku. . . . I miss the sun,” she adds fondly. “The base is always cold.”

“It is,” he says, cautious.

“Dark and cold. I used to have this—this light,” she continues, as if she can’t stop. The more she talks, the more knots she ties in the grass. She’s always liked having something to do with her hands. He wonders how awful the Academy must have been for her, with their rigid discipline for cleanliness and their need for order. Self-loathing begins to creep up behind his ears once more.

Except Rey seems to notice it and she takes his hand, the one that’s sitting atop the grass, a clean, ready palette for the dirt. “I used to hold onto it as much as I could. It got worse over the past couple years. Harder to find,” she admits. “I kept a book to remember little things. Like the light, or some ship details, or you.”

“A book,” he parrots, letting her fingers slip between his.

“Out of whatever paper I could find. It was only about ten pages. On Jakku there was a lot of paper. . . . I drew a lot when I was a kid, before you showed up.”

Rey keeps talking and he keeps listening, because damn if he hasn’t missed the sound of her voice or the way she cocks her head to the side when she’s remembering something. The little details he’s taken for granted from her as a child that are more endearing to her as she grows older. Except all it does is make him realize just how far away from him she truly is. But she keeps talking and he keeps listening, and she keeps holding his hand and he keeps letting her, and she keeps kneading her bare toes into the dirt and he does the same.

“Kylo?” she asks finally. He looks to the side, sees tendrils of hair fall from the three buns that line the back of her head. It only reminds him of the single bun that she wears now.

“What is it?”

“Did you find my family?”

“Yes,” says Kylo.

The smile on Rey’s face lights the entire island, brighter than the sun that peers just behind the low clouds in the sky. “How are they? Kylo, how are they?”

But Kylo can’t do it, damn him, he can’t tell her that they’re dead. That she’s Rey Kenobi, that she’s supposed to be training for the Light Side when she’s been sent into reconditioning and that she’s Dark. But is she? _Is_ she dark, when her subconscious is so clearly untouched?

“They miss you,” he says finally.

“I need to get back to them,” she says, scrambling to her feet and pulling Kylo with her. “Kylo, I need to— _agh—”_

“Rey?”

Rey holds a hand to her head, shuts her eyes in pain; she stumbles away and pulls her fingers from his. “No, no, come back,” she says, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “Come back—come back—”

“Rey!”

The sun vanishes and the clouds go grey, black, and Rey’s world begins to rain.

 

* * *

 

The months pass in the same fashion, but agonizingly slow, and filled with stark contrasts between Kylo’s waking moments and his sleep. Her barriers are completely lowered during sleep—a side effect from reconditioning, where he knows and has seen others completely vulnerable after hours of pain and exhaustion. And during those times he sees the Rey he knows over their connection. Each night is the same conversation. Each night she says she misses him and each night she asks about her family. Each night she plays with the dirt, lets it seep into her pores like the grease in a hyper drive repair shop, and each night she forgets the previous night’s happenings.

“Kylo, did you find my family?” she asks again, seven months after his return. She is taller still, cheeks drawing over high cheekbones. Kylo’s answer is always the same because all he wants is for it to break something out of her, for her to pull out of the effects of reconditioning, but every time she asks it, she spirals into despair only a minute later.

During the daytime she is unreachable. As most ‘Troopers are, they obey orders and show no conscious disobedience. The only thing Rey does during the day is train. She will not take no for an answer, nor will she rest, nor stop short of perfection. She is the ideal apprentice for Lord Snoke, and Kylo is disgusted with every single part of it.

It takes him weeks to figure out that he’s not disgusted with her, rather with the fact that Snoke will benefit from her power. For a long time, he’s known, deep down, that the Supreme Leader uses Kylo for Kylo’s power. But now Rey is strong enough that she’s piqued Lord Snoke’s interest. It isn’t her strength that infuriates Kylo—no, to the contrary, he’s enamored with it. But it’s the manipulation through which she’s held that he hates. And the more he hates it, the more he loathes himself . . . for letting it happen. . . .

On his way back from a meeting with Lord Snoke, he runs into Captain Phasma, who asks for him to oversee something important.

“I thought the weapon was already completed,” says Kylo. “I was told it was completed during my absence.”

“It has been, sir. Many of the army who had helped constructed it have graduated to the Finalizer. They need a target.”

Kylo’s lips press together behind his mask. “And? There’s no target at the moment.”

“General Hux was contemplating the New Republic’s system.”

“No,” says Kylo immediately.

Though he can’t see Phasma’s face, he knows her brows have risen up to her hairline; she says nothing. “Do you know how much valuable information about Luke Skywalker might be in that system?”

“Hux did not seem to think so, sir.”

“ _I_ think so,” says Kylo. “And who’s the Supreme Leader’s apprentice, between the two of us?”

Phasma’s covered head bows slightly. The cold light in the hallway shows his mask right back at him from the reflection of her helmet. “I will tell General Hux that you have business in the Republic,” she says.

“That you will.” As he begins to walk away, a thought strikes him, upside the head and rings between his ears. “Captain.”

“Sir?”

“What happened to FN-2187?”

Phasma wastes no time in replying. “He was sent to the Finalizer, sir.”

“Without reconditioning?”

“No, sir,” says Phasma. “No reconditioning. Hux had received orders for all resources to be put on your student.”

Loathing for Hux makes him dizzy. Kylo dismisses Phasma and tries to see past the scarlet that clouds his vision. At least FN-2187 is nowhere on the base, now, and he’s up in the Finalizer preparing for his missions in a couple years. Kylo expects his anger to abate at that, but he can’t help the way his fists clench at the thought of FN-2187 being away.

In fact, the more he thinks about it, the more it makes him uneasy. Had it not been FN-2187 who had helped Rey while Kylo had been gone? Had it not been FN-2187 who helped Rey train? Had it not been FN-2187 who satiated Rey’s curiosity about her surroundings, who kept her warmth alight on their connection while he had been on Moraband? Kylo sneers to himself, tries to shove away the feeling of debt to a random Stormtrooper.

But if it’s the only way to help her. . . .

 _You’re weak,_ says the voice in his head. _Years ago you would not have cared! Years ago you were to teach the Dark Side to her yourself!_

Kylo can’t pinpoint the fucking problem. He can’t tell if he’s furious because he didn’t show her the power of the Dark Side fast enough, or that the First Order has begun to take her from him. For years, she had been on the base, but untouched by the people around her, only listening to him. Now her power is widely known throughout the base and she’s further from him, asking no questions and withholding her emotions from their connection.

He realizes, suddenly and with a jolt in his chest, that he wants that connection open. Feel her emotions like he had so long ago—see how she has grown, show her what he’s seen and how he’s worked for her. How he cares. How he is _angry_ at what has happened to her. How _furious_ he is, because he’s held so much from her for fear of being weak.

Yet hasn’t it always been the opposite? Aren’t they stronger together as student and teacher? No, as _Force_ users, they’re stronger together! How foolish has he been to miss that? All he wants is strength, power to be like his grandfather. And Rey wants strength to find a family she believes is still at large in the galaxy.

“Rey,” he gasps to himself, under his breath and with a pounding in his chest that thrums through his ears. “Rey.” He tears through the halls as fast he can without sprinting toward where he knows she’s training. ‘Troopers step away as he stomps past, no doubt believing him to be on his way to deliver punishment, but nothing can be further from the truth.

Lieutenant Mitaka almost stops him in the hallway, but Kylo sends him flying into the control panel before the lieutenant can say a word.

 

* * *

 

 _Set those memories aside,_ comes a calm voice in Rey’s head. _They will make you weak. . . ._

Rey unfurls the image in her head, sees the Force reveal the steps she takes in the sand when she’s a child. The sand blackens, turns into mush and mud. Swamps her in a pit of black. But it’s not completely dark—the sky is still above her. _Cast it aside,_ says the voice. _Deeper,_ _child. Your family is just feet away._

A hand extends to the pit of black beneath her. The Force responds by squeezing her chest, making her fight for it. Power swells in her belly and she’s almost there, she can feel something almost brush at her fingertips—surely there is someone there—

Something explodes and a bright light fills her head. The voice vanishes, low purrs gone from the forefront of her mind. Eyes wrenching open, Rey sees Master Ren crossing toward her and throwing his helmet to the side.

“Rey,” he breathes, and he collapses in front of her, a hand coming to the back of her neck. She starts, yelping and trying to move away, but he’s too strong.

His forehead meets hers and a light bursts behind her eyes.

“Do you see it?” he whispers, his chest heaving up and down as he catches his breath. Rey can’t move. Something is happening to her. Memories that aren’t hers flow across the peculiar bond she shares with the man who has his forehead pressed to her own. “Do you see it?” he repeats, harsher, toned with pain. “Tell me you see it, Rey!”

“I—I see it,” she says, her throat closing.

“Do you _feel_ it?”

“M-Master?”

“No, not Master, never that! Do you _feel_ it? Feel it!”

“I feel it,” Rey says, because suddenly she sees red dirt under her feet. Feels the beating of a heart that isn’t hers. Sees visions of the Knights of Ren fighting against her. This must be his—what he had done on Moraband.

“Open your mind,” he pleads.

“My family. . . .”

“I know where they are,” says her master—Kylo.

Something breaks in her. A wall, something that keeps a bright light of images away. She remembers the light of a sun on Jakku. A man’s voice walking her through the dirt of a foreign planet as a toddler. She remembers machinery, the parts of a ship, a simulator. She remembers a tall man promising her to find her family as she climbs aboard his shuttle and leaves Jakku. Memories of a Stormtrooper who spent his time teaching her while Kylo was away. While Kylo was away . . . finding her family, becoming stronger.

“You know where they are,” she says.

Kylo’s fingers tap the back of her neck, reassuring. Her own hand comes up, does the same thing, revels in it. Months spent at the Academy drawing his likeness on the bedposts fill her head again. She’s so happy. Has she ever been so happy before in her life?

“I’m so sorry,” he breathes. Rey lowers the walls around her mind.

There is no revelation. No jump in her chest. Just the sound of another set of lungs in the room, the calm of a presence that filled her once as a toddler.

Rey opens her eyes, locks gazes with the man in front of her. Behind him is a faint blue glow, the glow of a man she faintly remembers in a dream. The tears tickle against her eyes, escaping down her cheek for the first time what seems like forever.

The words that leave Rey’s mouth are barely audible. “Grandfather?” And the dam inside her crumbles.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i'm so sorry for the long wait! and i know you guys have been waiting for this for a long time!! i'll admit, i got the newest fire emblem game and tbh i've been playing it nonstop. i'm so sorry :(
> 
> this chapter was also the most difficult to write. the final three have a definitive story-lines--most of this was character building. i hope it seemed believable. thanks for reading!!


	9. Year 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-eight. Rey is seventeen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is pretty important -- sets up important things for the last two chapters. i'm very tired and there might be some things that don't make sense, plus there might be a fuckton of typos, so i'll fix those later. 
> 
> warning for the following two chapters (not this chapter): chapters 10 and 11 will be explicit.

Rey is four, sitting in the mud, her hands caked in dirt and clay; a blue figure stands before her, holds out a hand, and tells her how to mold it so she can make her own little plane, one of those planes she sees every once in a while in a dream or two. She’s five and a half when all she remembers is one of those ships picking her up and introducing her to a world of sun and sand, when it leaves her there and she screams herself hoarse, pulled away to the tiny outpost that falls apart seam by seam—yet the blue figure is still there, who only appears when she thinks she’s completely, utterly alone.

She’s six when that fat beast tries to make her go to the Badlands on her own, to try to bring back a part from one of the newer wreckages when no one else wants to go. She’s six and her blue friend tells her, silently—because she’s never really heard his voice, but sometimes she sees him and she just _knows_ he wants to talk to her but she can’t hear him—that if she goes, she’ll never make it back, and her family would be so sad.

Rey’s seven when she tries to scavenge on her own for the first time, seven when she loses her footing and almost falls thirty feet to the rocks below. When she screams, holds out her hands, a blinding white light shoots from behind her eyes, lights every pore in her and she finds herself soaring high into the sky seconds before the rocks can claim her. The next thing she knows is slamming into the dunes, scratched and terrified, but okay. Her blue friend only shows up for a moment after, but when he does she wants to push him, wants to throw a tantrum, because where was he then? How come he didn’t tell her not to go? Wasn’t he supposed to _be_ there, to shake his head and tell her not to? _Where did he go?_ And so she does, screams at an empty space, fills the light start to drown in shadows.

Eight, and she starts to scavenge as best she can, tries to teach herself the basics of it, because her blue “friend” isn’t there to help her. Where he’s gone, she has no idea, but she doesn’t want to think about it. It’s her job, anyway. _She’s_ the one who has to stay on this desert planet, so she has to do the work. Occasionally, she’ll catch a glimpse of him when she’s lonely. Sometimes, at night, she’ll feel a warmth on her temple, see a sad smile as she takes a small staff she’d put together from whatever rods she can find. But in the mornings, he’s nowhere to be seen—and she quickly starts to forget about him.

Nine comes and she doesn’t think of him at all. Nothing, not until she’s cut in line by a tall man in black and under a mask, who searches through the parts she scavenged for a pump—nothing until, for a brief second when she accidentally calls him _Ben_ and he radiates fury, searches through her mind, and finds a light she’s long forgotten and a blue friend she’s forgotten along with it.

And now, at sixteen, seventeen in several days, her blue friend is standing in the corner of the room; Rey almost sees double, feels her vision waver as the tears try to spill. At the sight of him, all she remembers is the brief word from her toddler years, the feeling of dirt under her feet, the name _Kenobi._

It isn’t as if she’s _forgotten_ his presence, rather that she has never known about it until now, never saw his blue self follow her small steps through Jakku’s sands. But now that she’s seen him for the first time, it’s as if her world has clicked into place in the galaxy. Looking back on her memories, she sees him. Sees his guiding hands. Hands she never knew as a child, but along with them came the warmth she would never forget.

And he is, undeniably, her family.

“Grandfather,” she repeats, and her face crumples, her hands grasp at Kylo’s stripped sleeves. He pulls her into an embrace as she bites her words into his shoulder, wet eyes unable to look away from the ghost who slowly approaches them. Kylo’s hands dig into her back, hold her close as he stays silent beside her ear. “Grandfather . . . Kylo, he’s my grandfather. . . .”

“I know,” comes Kylo’s voice. “I know.” And, quietly, through her head and not out loud, comes his thoughts: _I feel it, too._

Hearing Kylo’s words in her head makes her shut her eyes, press her brows together and inhale. _I forgot we could do this,_ she thinks, hoping he’ll hear it.

Kylo doesn’t respond, only pulls her closer, if even possible. Through bleary eyes, tired from everything changing within the past several minutes—with the effects of reconditioning passing away, thanks to Kylo’s assistance through their connection—she’s suddenly very tired. But all Rey _wants_ to do is speak with her grandfather, whom before this day, she’d never met.

Slowly, she pulls away from Kylo, blinking rapidly. Kylo lets go but his hands trail down her arms as a sort of comfort, a promise that he’ll be right there if something happens.

Rey rises to her feet. Momentum gathers behind her toes and her chest is bright with relief. “I’m Rey,” she says, reaching out with her fingers, ready to feel that warmth she felt as a child. “You’re. . . .”

Her grandfather looks at her, sadly.

 _He says he can’t talk to you,_ comes Kylo’s voice. _You haven’t seen him for so long that the connection is weak. You can meditate on it._

But Rey wants to talk to him _now,_ as quickly as she can! _Isn’t there another way?_

Now that they’ve spoken like this again for the first time in years, neither of them can seem to give it up; starved for their bond, he replies immediately, standing from behind her and approaching to trail a finger against the back of her hand: _Perhaps. I have something that may help you._

* * *

 

What greets her in the middle of the cold room, which looks chillier from the white light that makes Kylo beside her appear paler than ever, is a melted, mutated skull-like object atop a pedestal. Kylo’s anticipation seeps into her until it’s all she can feel.

Rey has no idea what it is, really, but it looks like something out of a worn dream. Kylo walks up to the pedestal and bows his head in reverence; the murmured thoughts of _I brought her_ tinges their bond with a lasting sadness, that of which Rey’s never felt before in her life. And pride. Pride is there, too.

Kylo turns halfway, angles broad shoulders in her direction. “Come here.”

She does, steps growing quicker and more confident as the object draws her in. When she’s finally standing above it, her stomach clenches with ice. The helmet—it’s a helmet—is something out of a nightmare. . . .

 _Don’t be afraid,_ Kylo tells her. His gloved fingers trail along the back of her hand again. _You’ll find your answers._

Rey takes the helmet in her hands, feels the peculiar cold and warmth of the Force fill her almost immediately; Kylo’s shoulders hitch and he inhales a sharp, harsh noise, basking in her response over their bond. Unlike the vague memories she had gained earlier from _seeing_ the Force Ghost of her grandfather, now she understands the circumstances. Knows that this—this _Darth Vader_ —is important to her and to Kylo, but in such different ways. . . .

From somewhere beyond them yet still in the room, her ears catch the sounds of feet, the gentle hum of a person. Rey’s heels twist, not daring a squeak on the floor, and Kylo doesn’t turn with her because he knows what she’ll see, what she’ll hear. And before Rey can get a word out, the Force Ghost behind them says, “ _Rey.”_

Rey’s hand flies to her mouth, the other one tightly gripping Kylo’s hand. Obi-Wan Kenobi is walking over to them and his feet tap gently on the floor, his robes spill behind him, his breath is long and even. “ _Rey,_ ” he says again, and holds out one hand. “ _You’ve grown . . . so much.”_

“My parents,” she says, shaking her head, getting straight to the point. “Where— _why?_ ”

“ _I cannot tell you what happened to them, nor is it my place to do so,”_ says Obi-Wan. “ _All I can tell you is they wanted you to be safe from what was arriving.”_

“What arrived? _What?_ ”

“ _It is not my place to tell you,”_ says Obi-Wan. “ _But a Skywalker might be able to.”_

This information seems important to Rey, something she should dwell on, important enough because Kylo retreats so suddenly from their connection that she feels cold. She swallows, tries to focus on the matter at hand. “But—but you left me. I was alone on Jakku. . . . I was _waiting_. For years!”

Obi-Wan shakes his head, and he holds a hand over his eyes, sinks with weight that appears over his shoulders; Kylo angles his head away with a look of disgust, obviously not fond of the man in front of them, and Rey has to connect the dots. Obviously he is a Jedi master—user of the Light side. Kylo is Dark, has been for his whole life, Rey’s pretty certain about it. So of course there are problems. . . .

“ _I was with you_ ,” says Obi-Wan finally, dropping his hand to his side. “ _The whole time. You remember it now, am I correct?_ ”

“I do,” says Rey, nodding furiously, “but—but you didn’t speak. Nothing.”

A long while passes and Kylo lets go of her hand, steps away, fidgets. As though he’s intruding on a personal moment. _Stay,_ she says to him.

 _I won’t leave,_ he sends back, _but for all intents and purposes, I will not be speaking to this man._

She wants to reply, but Obi-Wan is still waiting for her—sensing her foreboding questions.

“So you were watching over me on Jakku,” says Rey, comprehending. “But why didn’t you—why didn’t you _say_ anything?”

“ _I tried_ ,” says Obi-Wan. He is quite possibly the most beautiful sight Rey has ever seen, with tired sunken eyes and thinning hair, but Rey adores him with all her heart.

And she is simultaneously feeling horribly betrayed.

“ _I know how you feel_ ,” says Obi-Wan gravely. “ _I attempted to speak to you, Rey. But once you were left on Jakku, there was such a disconnection from the light—from me—that I could not speak, only watch . . . to try to keep the dark from overcoming you_.”

From Kylo is another sense of discomfort and loathing. Rey doesn’t yet completely know why—he has always kept some part of him hidden, and suddenly, she wants to know about _him,_ but there’s no time for that now. “So I should have seen you,” she says to Obi-Wan. “But. . . .”

“ _You sensed me from a young age, but you could not hear me, nor could you see me_.” His thinning lips turn upward. “ _When you think back to your memories now, you can see everything. But as a child, you could not. Not since you were left on Jakku. You knew, however, that something was there. When you tried to scavenge at just seven years old, I tried to keep you from going, but you could not hear me. And now, when you think back on it, you do not feel the light in that memory. Am I correct_?”

Rey nods, too engrossed with everything about him to speak.

“ _The longer you were on that planet, the more you forgot. And yet, you still had a connection to the light. To me. And when I could no longer keep you warm, you took it into your own hands to keep your light_.” Obi-Wan goes silent. “ _Not all are like you when they are alone_.”

Kylo stiffens; Rey, brows furrowed, says, “But I wasn’t alone. _You_ were there.”

“You thought you were,” says Kylo beside her, quiet and frustrated. “Most go mad when that’s the case.” His eyes narrow at Obi-Wan. “Don’t get any ideas, old man.”

“ _My ideas don’t tend to work_ ,” the ghost replies. He takes a long time looking at Kylo, and irritation radiates as Kylo grows angrier. Kylo finally seems to snap; he wrenches away, bond burning and Rey has to hold back a gasp, and Obi-Wan vanishes; the door opens and Kylo storms out as Rey runs after him, trying to avoid the visions of a young, shadowy boy that plague her peripheries.

 

* * *

 

“Don’t play dumb,” says Rey, halfway through his door to his quarters, and Kylo sends her a look so withering she mimics it right back at him. “What was all that? Why do you hate him so much? What’s _wrong_?”

“Everything’s wrong, and it’s nothing you would understand,” says Kylo. “Get out the damn door! I’m trying to close it.”

“ _Nothing I would understand,_ ” she parrots, and she squeezes through his door as he curses. It slams shut behind her. “You realize we can literally speak to each other, right? In our heads? Has that escaped you, somehow?”

Kylo says nothing—he slams one hand against the wall, seething, and the sounds vibrates through her feet and to the tips of her fingers.

“Can you just talk to me, Kylo?” says Rey. “Surely there’s something . . . something I can understand. You know everything about me! So why. . . .”

The thought is soft, beaten. It comes through their connection as if infected and weak: _Because you would hate me._

“I couldn’t! I wouldn’t.”

_You should hate me._

“I tried. Believe me, I tried—”

 _You should try harder._ Kylo’s hand releases, splays fingers against the cold wall, and he bows his forehead against it. “Obi-Wan Kenobi was a renowned Jedi Master,” he says finally, voice cracking in every other word. “He’s your grandfather, who you remembered today. I couldn’t have you continue to be _reconditioned_.” The word is bitten out like poison. “So I gave you everything I know about him.”

“But I don’t understand why you hate him. Is it because he’s a Jedi? And _I’m_ related to a Jedi, so—”

“No. _No,_ ” says Kylo. “You—no. You are. . . .”

Rey waits.

“You’re . . . I can’t,” he says. He shakes his head. “I can’t fucking do it. I can’t! Why am I— _why am I weak?_ ” His hand drops from the wall, grasps at his hair, eyes squeezed shut. “I’ve trained my whole life—I’m the Master of the Knights of Ren—I’m Lord Snoke’s apprentice, and why am I—why does Obi-Wan Kenobi—why do _you_ do this to me?”

This is the most flustered she’s ever seen him. Red-faced, heavy breathing.

Beautiful.

Rey wants to run back to her room, to suddenly understand why this is happening. Instead, she reaches out, tries to offer him some sort of companionship. “I don’t think you’re weak,” she says. “You’re so strong.”

“I’m not. I’m. . . .”

“You are,” she says firmly. “And I think my grandfather would agree with me. No matter who you might be or what you think of him.”

 

* * *

 

The next couple days pass and Kylo receives word that he is to travel to the Finalizer for the next several years. It is not too horribly far, but he has a feeling Rey won’t be happy. He’s more annoyed by it more than anything—he’s only barely come back and yet he’s being sent off again, on another mission away from Rey, whom he has promised to teach. When he catches Rey in the training room, practicing Force levitation, he says, “I’m leaving for the Finalizer tomorrow.”

“I know,” she says, and his stomach flips.

When she doesn’t do anything other than that—just continues to call her staff to her from the other side of the room before throwing it back and repeating the process—Kylo says, “ _And?_ ”

“ _And,_ ” she says, “that’s it. We’re going to the Finalizer. Okay.”

“ _I’m_ going to the Finalizer,” he corrects her.

“You sure are. I happen to be coming with you.”

Kylo doesn’t have orders to bring her with him. “I—you can’t,” he says.

“Do you have orders saying I can’t?”

A beat. “No.”

“Then I’m coming with you.” Her hand clamps around the staff for the sixth time. Rey strings it around her shoulder by the strap this time and stops practicing. “So let’s go pack.”

The next day is spent with Rey helping Kylo pack, as she has no more belongings in her old room or the room in the Academy when it was confiscated—all she has is a little book made of paper (paper Kylo doesn’t even remember seeing at all on the base in all his years) filled with sketches that she stows away into her tunic very quickly. Every once in a while, Obi-Wan Kenobi appears and asks her questions, revels in her attention. Kylo detests it.

But he knows he should expect it, too; Rey had asked for him to find her family long ago, and Kylo has done it. And while he should be proud, instead he feels jealous, lonely, and bitter. Here she has a Jedi master at her whim. Her own grandfather. Is he to think she’ll still stay with him? Train with him? He does not regret doing what he did to pull her out of the reconditioning’s effects, but Kylo is so selfish. Too selfish. . . .

The next morning is when they depart for the Finalizer. Rey is asking questions, telling him to hurry up, telling him to stop _drudging down the halls,_ telling him to lighten up. And, regardless of how selfish he might feel, he’s happy she’s not . . . that she’s not . . .

He shoves the thought away when Obi-Wan Kenobi appears to walk past her and casts a quick, sad look behind him toward Kylo.

 

* * *

 

The Finalizer is enormous. It clearly isn’t as large on the base on which Rey spent her time for the past seven years, but all of it seems more accessible to her. Stormtroopers clack past as she moves at Kylo’s side, not remarking on her quick moving eyes. The Finalizer is all tempered durasteel with metallic light from every corner, revealing every possible hiding space. Every once in a while, a droid will pass by with a cart of scrap metal to finish construction upon the ship. And every time she sees it, Kylo says, _Rey!_

 _Sorry,_ she tells him, dragging her eyes from the cart.

They seem to walk forever—well, Kylo seems to stomp but masks it as a terrifying glide—and ‘Troopers and officers alike part ways for him. They don’t necessarily know her yet, but the fact that Rey keeps pace with Kylo is enough for them to realize that this, _she—_ she’s that one apprentice they’ve heard a few whispers about.

When Kylo stops at the threshold of a hallway, Rey nearly crashes into him. “H—” she begins, making to move past him, but he holds out a finger by his side. She freezes.

A trooper is standing several feet away, unmoving. Kylo descends on the ‘Trooper so quickly Rey sees the Stormtrooper’s fingers clench around the blaster.

“I was told,” says Kylo, enunciating every letter of each word as if he’s speaking to a child, “that there would be two adjunct rooms in this hall.”

“No, sir,” says the ‘Trooper.

“Am I wrong in assuming this is the East Wing?”

“No, sir,” repeats the ‘Trooper. (Rey feels sorry for her.)

 _What’s going on?_ she asks, but Kylo only clenches his fists.

A moment passes, silent, and the ‘Trooper continues, “These are your private quarters, sir . . . we were not told you would be bringing anyone else.”

Kylo steps back, helmet angled toward the single door in the hall. The back of Rey’s neck warms and she hastily runs through every single named technical part of a TIE-fighter she knows.

“Fine,” he says tightly, thoughts masked from Rey. He says nothing else and the door latch clicks open.

Kylo’s chambers on the Finalizer are not as big as the one Rey is used to on Starkiller, but the mood is exactly the same: deep metals, harsh, with hard light illuminating every corner. Rey’s lips twist to the side as she notices how _clean_ it is.

“So these are your new quarters,” she says out loud, somewhat bitterly, not daring to think he’d want her to stay here, as well. He doesn’t answer her immediately, instead moving to a slimmer door and latching it open. Seconds clock by—Kylo’s relief trickles into her head like the beginning of a waterfall.

“Yes,” he answers her finally. ”Come here. These are yours.”

 _Her_ room is right next to his, smaller, and there’s not even a bed: it’s empty with the exception of a chair. “Thanks,” she says dryly. “Very charming.”

“I’ll have something for you to sleep on sent here,” he tells her. “This isn’t intended to be your room. By the looks of it, I would think it’s supposed to be—“

“—your lounge?” says Rey.

“—a _study_ ,” he finishes slowly. “Lounge?”

“Sorry. Thought you’d need your private space.”

He watches her for such a long time that Rey needs to look away from his mask. When she hears the unclasping of his helmet, the breath of humanity, she has to fight the urge to turn and, at the same time, to chide her childishness.

“Alright.” He sighs. “What’s wrong?”

She has no idea how to say it with words, so Rey shows him images, imagines a Kylo in her head that doesn’t want her around, who is ashamed of having to put up with her in a room with him for a small amount of time. Kylo’s slight frowns disappears and he pulls her away from the small room, large hand nearly wrapping all the way around her upper arm. Tension filters all the way from him to her as she senses his struggle to say what he needs to say. With all his loathing about her grandfather, she can only imagine how it might be difficult. So she doesn’t expect what he says.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he says tightly as he sits her on a chair by the desk. A hand moves to the bun on her head, the bun that had been there since the reconditioning—he undoes it carefully, perhaps not even realizing that he does it at all, and then he begins to redo her hair in the buns she’d used to have. “Being separated from you isn’t possible for me.”

And, unseen by Kylo, Rey’s cheeks grow warm and suddenly she wants nothing more than for Kylo’s hand to mold in her hair forever, to never finish the buns that he’s working on. She grips her tunic tight, tries not to think about how nice those words are, how nice it is to have someone who wouldn’t leave her!

Except this is everything that she felt at the Academy and more—the need to have him back, the want to see his face, hands, to memorize every detail of him. The fact that Kylo is here should satiate her. Instead, the feeling is only worse. It’s _awful,_ and yet, he only thinks of her as a kid he found on Jakku, a kind with which he has a Force Bond—a kid who first had her _cycle_ with him having to call a droid for her! And yet, here she is, sitting with his _hands in her hair_ and imagining things far too descriptive for him to know, and the walls around her thoughts are so high that after a while, Kylo’s hands drop from her head, third bun unfinished.

“Rey,” says Kylo again, and his voice makes her want to drown. “I thought that was what you wanted. For me not to leave. Am I wrong?”

“You’re right,” she says, hoping he won’t ask about the barriers around her end of their bond.

“You don’t trust me,” says Kylo, completely misinterpreting her distance. “You’re right. I’m a fool. But you can trust me. I don’t know what _Kenobi_ has been saying—”

“That’s not it,” she says, meeting his eyes and glaring at him. _Just treat everything as normal,_ she reminds herself. _He’s just normal Kylo._

“That’s not it?” he repeats after her, bemused.

Rey shakes her head, standing and finishing the last bun in her hair herself. “No,” she says, and lowers the barriers. _A friend,_ she reminds herself firmly. “It’s just me. And I’ll get better. Let’s go look at the new planes, Kylo, I’ve read some great things about them on the holos.”

With that, she shuts her awful little unreciprocated feelings away as far as she can from Kylo over their bond.

 

* * *

 

The planes are the highlight of Rey’s week, Kylo finds, and it’s easy to smile beneath his helmet when she tries to hide her excitement around so many other officers and ‘Troopers. She catches it easily despite the indifferent look on her face as she admires a set of new engines. _Stop smiling,_ she admonishes and he kills the smile instantly. _Lucky you’ve got a mask!_

_You want one?_

_No way,_ she says, but adds, _I’d just make one. It’s not hard._

A clack of boots in the distance echoes toward them as a new set of training ‘Troopers begin to march in for training with the planes, led by Phasma. Kylo stands in place, turning to meet them, but when something flips in his head, he realizes Rey’s attention to the fighter planes has been completely diverted to something else. She’s very diligently searching the group of ‘Troopers. For something. Someone. . . .

 “Eight-seven!” she whispers to herself out loud, and Kylo almost curses. Luckily, before she can actually do anything, Captain Phasma—who leads the squads—dismisses them and they begin to leave in their own individual squads. “Eight-seven!” Louder, she starts toward him, trying not to run, and Kylo sees suddenly why she knows _who_ Eight-Seven is—he walks with the same trademark clack, but the way his fingers tap on his blaster give him away.

If Kylo might have seen the ‘Trooper’s face, he’s sure it would have lit up at the sight of Rey. He tucks away his blaster and almost reaches out to meet her hug; but then his eyes swivel to the side, catch sight of Phasma in the corner and his squad by his side. His arms drop. So do Rey’s.

“Hi, Rey,” he says through his helmet. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you off of Starkiller. What’re you doing here?”

“I came with K—Lord Ren,” she says, catching herself, and Kylo turns away to see Captain Phasma’s helmet turned right toward them. _Careful,_ he reminds Rey.

“You did?” FN-2187's voice is bemused. “Hey, Rey . . . what happened to you after you took the fighter jet?”

The smile on Rey’s lips slowly fades. Her head cogs around the words as she blinks at him. Kylo listens in through their bond but he walks away, knowing that the ‘Troopers— _cadet Troopers_ , still—will need to think him intimidating, and he moves toward Phasma like a storm. But his mind is still with Rey and she draws him in, soaking in the support he offers. _I don’t want to lie to him,_ she yields.

_Then don’t. But be careful._

When he reaches Phasma, he can’t hear exactly what Rey is telling FN-2187, nor does he necessarily need to; he knows that she says she was put under watch. Carefully worded. “Put under watch” is how she tells the ‘Trooper; “Always with Lord Ren” is how she finishes it.

Kylo’s satisfied with the way she puts it. He almost flinches when Phasma moves to the control panel and brings up the statistics of the squads who are about to go on their training exercises. Over his and Rey’s connection, he feels FN-2187 ask somewhat worriedly, “And you’re alright?”

“I . . . yeah,” she says. “Are _you_ okay?” _Is it normal for Stormtroopers to be this. . . ._ She sends the thought to Kylo, who attempts to focus on what Phasma is showing him about the cadets.

“I’m alright,” says FN-2187. “I need to get back to”—he looks back toward a table with three other ‘Troopers—“my squad. I’m happy you’re okay, though. Happy that, uh, Lord Ren is . . . helping you.”

Kylo pulls away then, because Rey begins to feel uncomfortable, and Phasma is trying to hold his attention. “This is one of the better squads,” says Captain Phasma, drawing his focus toward her and away from FN-2187 and the rest of his squad in the distance.

And speaking of FN-2187, him and the rest of his squad are pasted up on the projection; Kylo leans forward, frowning. He motions to the image in front of him. “This is FN-2187’s squad?”

“Yes.”

“They all seem as if they’re doing fine, but not this one,” says Kylo. “FN-2003.”

“That is the one who was working sanitation back on Starkiller Base, sir.”

“The one FN-2187 decided to follow?” FN-2003 is nothing remarkable. Everything short of remarkable. And everything about FN-2187 is extraordinary. Too extraordinary?

Phasma tilts her head in confirmation. “General Hux wants him watched closely—”

“I will do it myself,” says Kylo. “Tell _General Hux_ not to trouble himself.”

The captain says nothing, only makes a direct note under _Circumstances_ for FN-2187. Satisfied, Kylo turns away, sees Rey no longer with FN-2187 or his squad. They’re off now, loading into a shuttle for their off-ship training.

“How old was she when you found her, sir?” comes Phasma’s voice from behind him, the clang of her armor barely in his ears until she speaks up.

“What?”

“The girl, Rey,” says Phasma. When Kylo turns back around, she’s pointing down in the distance, where Rey stares at the control panel, looking at some of the fighter plane’s specifications, occasionally looking past the dock and out into space.

Kylo frowns, thinking about it. She had turned ten sometime in his memory, he knows that.

 _I was nine,_ she says over their bond, amused.

_Really?_

_Really_ is her response, and Kylo repeats it to Phasma, who nods under her helmet, completely oblivious to the conversation he and Rey have just had.

“She’s grown,” says Phasma. “She’d be good for the holofilms.”

Rey’s reaction is complete disgust, and Kylo knows why: they’re propaganda holos, and she’s more hateful of reconditioning than ever. Frankly, he hates it, too—he doesn’t need to think of Rey being _corrupted_ like that. _But she’s right,_ Kylo tells her. _You’d look great for them. They try to get the more attractive ones on there._

Before he fully senses Rey’s reaction—her shoulders seem to tense as she watches the screen on the panel in the distance—Phasma says to Kylo, “Wouldn’t you think, sir?”

“Think what, Captain?”

“She’d be good for the holofilms. Very pretty,” she says.

Rey’s nowhere in his head now, seems absorbed by the fighter planes.

“I”—every single expletive he knows flashes in his mind in a single second—“suppose so.” Kylo’s going to be dead by the end of the night, he’s positive.

He excuses himself, tries to cool his red face under his mask without Rey noticing. Pulls his hood over his helmet even though there’s no need—says roughly to Rey, _I’m going to my quarters._

_Wait for me, Kylo!_

_Don’t follow,_ he shoots back, frustrated, and storms off. Lieutenant Mitaka (why the fuck is he always around, even on the Finalizer? Tailing Hux, no doubt) almost causes him to trip over his robes and Kylo prompts shoots him all the way up into the nearest TIE-fighter.

 

* * *

 

“Open the door,” comes Rey’s voice outside his quarters.

He doesn’t respond, slams his helmet down on his pedestal. It thuds in the ashes beneath it, blurs his vision for a moment. He doesn’t want to talk to her.

“Kylo!”

“Lord Ren!” he yells back, before nearly biting his tongue. “It’s Lord Ren, dammit.”

“You hypocrite. You told me to call you ‘Kylo’ not even a week ago! _Open the door!_ ”

“What in the galaxy could you possibly want?”

 _In case you haven’t noticed,_ she sends into his mind like a fucking _brick,_ all hard and stubborn and furious, _my room is past this door, you idiot. How about you—_

If there’s anything Kylo has learned in the past however-many-years of Rey Kenobi, it’s that she’s always right. Always. There’s no end to her somehow one-upping him. So he stomps over, sliding the door so hard it almost breaks, and he barks, _“What?”_

“Thank you,” she says, giving him the fakest smile he’s ever seen. She pushes past him, plops on his bed, and gives him a murderous glare. “What _was_ that, earlier? You almost sent Mitaka to his death!”

“I do that every week. Every other week if he’s lucky,” says Kylo, slamming the door back shut. “I had things to do. Is that so difficult to understand?”

Rey’s hands hold over her chest. Her feet cross under her and she settles against his headboard, looking unconvinced.

“ _What?_ ” he repeats.

“You’ve been acting so weird,” she says. “Weirder than normal. I wish I hadn’t been reconditioned”—the word is a toxin leaving her lips—“when you came back. It’s ruined both of us.”

“In what way?”

“I don’t know!” She huffs to herself, straightens her three buns, and suddenly Kylo’s thrown into earlier when he’d fixed her hair.

Damn! Damn it _all!_

“I don’t know what happened. You left, everything changed—I went to the Academy.” She’s babbling like crazy. She’s on a whirlwind, like the motors she likes to clean and put together. Like a speeder he’s sure she’d build for fun if she had the resources. “I went to the Academy and I didn’t have anyone. Not until Eight-Seven, you know. And—and I missed you _so_ much. I shouldn’t have! I shouldn’t have missed you! Especially when _you_ didn’t miss me. But what was I supposed to do?”

“Rey—”

“No, I’m going to finish,” she says viciously. “ _Thank you_ for coming back, really. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for finding my grandfather. You upheld your promise as best you could, Kylo, and I’m so grateful. But everything changed when you left. I—I missed you,” she says again. “I’m not used to saying that. But I did. And I had no idea if you did, either!”

“I did miss you!” he yells back at her. “But I had to find your family! And it was the only way I could do it. But it _kills_ me that while I have to find yours, I get pulled closer and closer to the Light!”

Rey’s jaw drops; Kylo’s breath catches in his throat.

“You what?” she says finally.

“Nothing.” Harsh. Final. “Nothing.”

“The Light?” she says. “You’re. . . .”

“I’m not—I’m Kylo Ren. I’m Kylo Ren, I’m Master of the Knights of Ren—I’m the Supreme Leader’s apprentice, I’m—”

“You’re pulled to the Light?” she interrupts, eyes wide.

“No, no, I—misspoke—”

Rey shakes her head, moving to stand from the bed, but Kylo holds out his hand. “Don’t come near me.”

“Kylo, I want to talk about this.”

“I _don’t_ ,” he says.

“But I—I’ve been pulled to the Light for forever,” she says, frowning. “And we can work on it—”

“WE CAN’T!” he bellows, and Rey shrieks as his lightsaber ignites and sears through one of his bedposts. “I CAN’T DO IT, REY! I CAN’T BECAUSE I DESTROYED THE JEDI ACADEMY AND BETRAYED THE LIGHT. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? I AM _DARK_ , I ALWAYS HAVE BEEN! I’M FOLLOWING MY GRANDFATHER’S FOOTSTEPS! I’M TO FINISH WHAT HE STARTED! WHAT DARTH VADER STARTED! AND YOU— _YOU_ —MAKE ME _WEAK TO THE LIGHT!_ ”

“What are you _talking_ about, ‘grandfather’?” Rey shrieks right back. “Why are you _yelling_ at me? _Darth Vader?_ Are you saying Darth Vader is your _grandfather?_ ”

Kylo roars again, sears another bedpost, and Rey doesn’t even flinch this time. She pulls the staff off her shoulder and immediately disarms him when he finishes, distracted and enraged, and catches the hilt before shutting it off. “You’re going to sit down and tell me everything,” she says. “Because I’m going to be honest with you, Kylo. I love you, and you make me strong. So if I’m going to make you weak, I’m not going to stay here. I _will_ leave.”

He breathes heavily, mind rushing and rushing and he races to catch up with her words. Finally his brows draw together and he thinks he might have caught up, and he thinks he’s about to choke or throw up, because—because—“You what?”

“I love you,” she says.

“You’re. . . . seventeen,” he says.

“And you’re very observant.”

“You’re. . . .”

“I don’t expect anything,” she says. “But I know what I feel. I was ashamed of it, earlier. But after what you just told me, I know I shouldn’t be. Both of us shouldn’t be ashamed, so I’m not going to be. You’re going to tell me everything,” Rey adds. “You already know all there is to know about me now.”

Kylo shakes, tries to calm the jittering that invades him with her confession, with everything that’s happened to him, that his filled him from suddenly when Phasma has mentioned it—but he doesn’t feel that way, can’t feel that way. She’s made him weak, but they’re stronger together, but she _loves_ him, but he’s _weak_ , and she’s too _young_ to know what she wants, and—

“Kylo,” says Rey, holding out a hand.

He shakes, wants to sit. He does. He sits behind the two bedposts he’s just destroyed, looks at her, sees the way she sits beside him and waits patiently.

Kylo tells her about Ben Solo.

 

* * *

 

The months that pass are filled, from Rey’s end, on making sure her training with Kylo is not awkward. That it’s beneficial in every way, both to him and to her, and ever since Snoke had received word about Rey being on the Finalizer _as well as_ Kylo, he had sent Kylo a mission: train her for finding Luke Skywalker. When Rey finds Kylo to ask him about his meditations, he’s uncomfortable—but nothing slips past his mask. Walking through the halls of the Finalizer are as normal as ever when he has his mask on.

General Hux turns the corner the same time as Kylo and Rey do and she nearly collides into the tall man, who stumbles unceremoniously and sends a wrinkled nose in her direction, a look of such distaste that she feels her mouth go sour. “Sir,” she says, bowing her head.

“I didn’t know you accompanied us to the Finalizer, General,” says Kylo, voice morphed by the mask.

“And I didn’t know you were taking your student with you,” says Hux.

Rey reaches, takes Kylo’s apprehension in stride. “I’ve got to find Luke Skywalker with Lord Ren.”

“Mind your tongue, girl.”

 _You’re supposed to be reconditioned,_ comes Kylo’s thoughts. “Of course, sir,” says Rey out loud. _I hate him,_ she sends back.

His amusement tinges through her as Hux strides away, overcoat billowing behind him. Kylo, through his mask, turns down the hall and Rey follows as he heads for the dock. She’ll be going on his shuttle for the first time in years. _Do you have everything_? he inquires. _Your simulators, your staff?_

Her stomach jumps at the fact that he’s asking her, not to mention over their bond rather than out loud. And he senses it—he knows because he says, _Rey._

 _I have everything,_ she replies.

_Good._

On his shuttle, with Stormtroopers lining the ramp and the Knights of Ren reporting to him, Kylo dismisses them, but not before pulling the second highest ranking Knight over. “The order from Lord Snoke is to locate Luke Skywalker,” says Kylo. “In my absence, I will be trying to locate him. I will not be gone long. You are to continue training.”

The Knight nods from under her helmet. “Yes, Lord Ren.”

When she leaves, Rey steps up to him, waiting. Kylo glances at her over her shoulder. She sees, briefly, that he observes her face carefully, eyes behind the mask lingering on the strands of hair that hang from both sides of her head over their connection. Then he turns away and she follows into the depths of his shuttle.

 

* * *

 

The next month that follows on the shuttle is a busy one, one where Rey spends her time not with Kylo, but with the Force Ghost of her grandfather. Kylo is too busy, too scared of physically spending time with her.

“I don’t know why he’d lie about missing me or liking me,” she says to Obi-Wan Kenobi one night on the shuttle when it’s on Coruscant, where Kylo is off the shuttle, searching for information. “He doesn’t lie.”

“ _So perhaps he’s not lying, Rey,_ ” says Obi-Wan. “ _Perhaps he doesn’t want to accept it. Accepting you is accepting the Light.”_

“But I’m not Light,” she argues. Sighing, Rey leans against the cold wall. “I wish I was. I just don’t think I could be a Jedi. But I can’t do what Kylo or _Snoke_ want me to do.”

“ _Because you are not Dark,”_ her grandfather replies. “ _Rey, the Force is neither Light nor Dark. It is how we use it that distinguishes us. The Force is greatest when it is in balance within the user.”_

“Well . . . Kylo’s not exactly Dark either.”

“ _You are right,”_ says Obi-Wan. “ _He told you about Ben Solo?”_

“He told me everything.”

“ _He was named after me,”_ says Obi-Wan. _“I went by the name of Ben Kenobi for many years. I was Obi-Wan when I trained his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker.”_

Rey frowns, thinks back to her conversation with him several months ago. “He didn’t tell me that part.” Which is upsetting, but anything about the name “Ben” seems to upset him. Then she realizes it. “Oh,” she breathes. “Oh. He—he hates you. You trained his grandfather. He was named after you. He feels like. . . .”

“ _Precisely._ ”

“Thank you,” she says. When she falls into a long silence, she thinks she should reach out to Kylo, ask him to come back to the ship, but if he’s afraid of the Light, she thinks she should be a little more patient. But there’s something else, now.

“I think,” she begins, looking at the Force Ghost of the Jedi master beside her, “that you should go.”

“ _I don’t need to know why,_ ” he says gently. “ _I understand. But know this, Rey, that Ben Solo is gone. I don’t want you to try to bring him back.”_

“I’m not going to. But just because Ben Solo is gone doesn’t mean the Light is, too.”

“ _Ah,_ ” says Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he smiles at her, genuinely happy for the first time, Rey thinks. “ _And that is why, I believe, that he will come to accept you, too. Just as you accept him.”_

He leans forward, and though she can hardly feel it, he presses his lips against her forehead. “ _I will wait for you where your parents lived. Come when you are ready.”_

“Lived?”

He smiles again. “ _Lived._ ” And vanishes, like he might have been a figment of her imagination.

 

* * *

 

When they reach the Finalizer once more a month and a half later (and Kylo’s attained relatively important information about someone named _Lor San Tekka,_ a famous explorer and apparent long-time ally of the New Republic), Kylo asks her about Obi-Wan with tight lips, looking highly uncomfortable. He seems heavily focused on the dents in his helmet, scratching at them to rid them of dirt.

“What about him?” says Rey, who stops short of the door to her own smaller room.

“I haven’t seen him with you recently,” says Kylo, eyes glancing up at her. “Forgive me if I’m concerned.”

Rey regards the way he scrubs at his helmet, paying attention to it as if it’s suddenly the most interesting thing in the world. He’s never focused so much on it before. “He left,” says Rey. “I told him to go.”

Kylo’s head snaps up this time, staring at her as if she’s suddenly grown another head. He doesn’t stop for a long time, as though trying to decipher her solely through her expression. It won’t make a difference. So Rey sets her staff down, pulls off her boots, and pulls off her gauntlets. “Look,” she says, tossing them to the side. “You’re my teacher. Why would I need someone else?”

“He’s your family.”

“He _is_ my family. And he understands why I told him to leave,” says Rey.

Kylo rises quickly and the helmet clatters to the floor, the sound shaking into her ears. He’s in front of her with three large steps, holding a hand to her temple. “Let me see,” he pleads. “Please.”

He sees an island on the ocean when she shows it to him, where Ben Kenobi keeps her company as she digs through the mud. “You’re so lonely,” Kylo whispers when the images vanish. “And you cast him away. Why?”

The answer is so obvious but Kylo refuses to accept it. She steps back to her door, gathers her belongings—looks away when he reaches out. “Rey, please. I—”

“I don’t want to make you _weak.”_

“You don’t. You don’t make me weak,” he says, desperate. “Not you. Not your grandfather—it was Luke Skywalker, it was my parents. It was—it was Snoke. I’m strong because of you. I’m—please, Rey.” His voice catches, his hair is astray, he’s sweating and pale. An internal struggle, one so strong she doesn’t think he’ll emerge from it any time soon if he tries to fight it off by himself.

And Rey is good at pulling things apart, at discerning the problem. So she sets her staff down once more, takes his hand, lets him lead her to the bed where he gathers her into his arms and cries.

She doesn’t go to her small room that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! hope the length and content made up for the time i spent not updating it. finals are right around the corner for me, so once those are done, i should be on top of this.


	10. Year 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is twenty-nine. Rey is eighteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long chapter. Contains smut at the end.

The mess hall where the ‘Troopers eat is large and busy, half filled by droids and half by ‘Troopers themselves. Their helmets are off, so it’s easy finding the one Stormtrooper Kylo needs to find. The second he enters the mess hall, the hall grows silent, the near-quiet hum of the droids growing even quieter.

“FN-2187,” he says, quietly, because the mask over his face will filter it for him. And he turns, leaves the hall, hears a scatter of boots in the room as ‘Troopers and droids make way for FN-2187. Kylo continues down the hall, knows that the young man is following him without question. It’s satisfying. Knowing that he can hold this much power over so many people. Who follow his every word.

He walks down the halls of the Finalizer with FN-2187 behind him, trying to march quickly enough to keep up with Kylo’s long steps. No one comes in their way. Surprisingly, not even Mitaka shows up.

When he finally reaches the officers’ room, a planning room where Hux is already seated, he senses FN-2187 hesitate the barest bit before he follows Kylo into the room. If Hux notices this as well, he says nothing. Kylo stays standing; Hux is sitting and pulling up a file on the holo, where it shows FN-2187 as a child in the academy, his studies, his assessments.

“FN-2187,” says Hux, finally angling his head toward the ‘Trooper. “Set your blaster down on the table and remove your helmet.”

He does so, revealing a carefully masked expression underneath the ‘Trooper bucket. Kylo has to give the young man credit. There is no insecurity on his face, none at all.

“You’ve been summoned,” continued Hux, casting a disgusted look in Kylo’s direction, “because Lord Ren has requested you to complete a series of tasks prior to your first mission as a Stormtrooper.”

He motions to several tasks and FN-2187 reads through them quickly, judging by how his pupils move over the projection. Meanwhile, Hux doesn’t take his eyes off of the ‘Trooper, watches him with narrowed eyes, as if waiting for him to do something wrong and out of the ordinary. Kylo watches, too—wants to know exactly who this man is, this man who kept Rey sane while he had been away.

“You will report to me in precisely three hours,” says Kylo once FN-2187 appears to finish reading. It’s the first time he’s spoken since he called the man out of the mess hall. “Bring cart R-102 when you do. The contents inside them are extremely valuable. Do _not_ touch them.”

FN-2187 frowns, doesn’t let anything slip. “That is all,” Kylo says. “Dismissed, FN-2187.”

Once FN-2187 is gone, presumably to rearrange his things for his new assignment, Hux turns to Kylo with pursed lips. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Ren,” he says. “FN-2187 is dangerous.”

“And under my watch, he won’t be,” says Kylo. “General, if you worry your little head too much, your hair will fall out.”

He leaves the room with Hux muttering under his breath and fixing his hair with his leather gloves, attempting to straighten it and make sure it all was still attached to his head.

 

* * *

 

Three hours passes slowly for Kylo, even slower for Rey, especially since all she knows is that he’s called a “’Trooper to keep an eye on her”. Her initial reaction had been completely astounded, almost betrayed, until he holds a finger over her lips and says, “ _Rey._ It’s to keep up appearances.”

 _Oh,_ because of course. She’s supposed to be completely first order. It’s easier forgetting about that when she’s not on Starkiller Base with an enormous basin of officials—and Lord Snoke—following her every move. It’s easier forgetting about it when she can claim Kylo Ren as her master.

“So who’s the ‘Trooper?” she inquires, taking care to look up from her staff. Kylo, staring at his helmet on the pedestal of ashes in front of him, is completely distracted.

“Anybody home?”

“Did you say something?” says Kylo, glancing up at her.

“Yeah. But if you’re, you know, busy—”

“You’ll see who the Stormtrooper is in a moment,” says Kylo; he sifts through her open and comfortable thoughts quickly as he catches up. “I’m going to be busy with finding Luke Skywalker very soon. You will need someone to keep an eye on you.”

Rey blows air from between her lips. He’s said that already. She waits in silence for another two minutes, keeping herself occupied by running through every brand of fuel pumps she can remember, until Kylo says, “He’s coming.”

“Who?”

“Don’t you feel it?”

Rey closes her eyes and searches the Force that extends through her spine and into the floor; it lights up beneath her, warms behind her eyes when she recognizes a familiar gait and a steady heart. “Eight-seven!” she exclaims, leaping up. “You’re having Eight-Seven on duty?” It’s so _odd_ that he would do this—that he would pick the closest person she had to a friend to keep her company on the Finalizer. It doesn’t fit. Her smile fades and Rey finds herself holding onto her staff with tighter fingers. “Why did you assign _him_ to me?”

Kylo looks away. His mouth doesn’t seem able to say it out loud. Instead, almost muddled in the back of her head comes Kylo’s sent voice. _I’m indebted to him._

It’s impossible for her to fathom why, why she’s got a teacher who feels indebted to a Stormtrooper, who feels obligated to allow her time with anyone who isn’t _him._ Kylo has always been extremely possessive of her, taking care she did not spend too much time with the Knights of Ren as she grew older, that she didn’t spend time with others too much. “There’s a balance in the First Order,” he continues to tell her. “It should not be disturbed.”

But several months have passed and he is busier, often in turmoil and angry. Rey’s noticed the lack of time he spends with her. She doesn’t want to think about why. (She has a pretty strong guess as to what it is. After her confession those months back, she suspects he doesn’t want her to grow any more attached. Well, it won’t work! What’s done is done, in her opinion!)

So the fact that she has a Stormtrooper—and _FN-2187_ —specifically put on duty by Kylo himself to “watch over her”, as he so plainly puts it, is astounding. Normally, with any other ‘Trooper, she would be offended.

But Kylo knows who Eight-Seven is. Knows the gratitude she has for the young man. The affection she holds deep in her chest for this ‘Trooper who doesn’t even truly have a name!

When the entrance way opens for her dear friend ( _friend!_ ) Rey almost tackles him to the floor; FN-2187 yelps under his helmet. “Careful, Rey, careful! I’ve got some important stuff here!”

“Sorry,” she says breathlessly, pushing strands of hair out of her face and peering behind him at the cart in the threshold. Behind her, Kylo—now masked—says, “FN-2187.”

Eight-Seven stiffens immediately. _Don’t be hard on him,_ Rey thinks. _Please!_ She practically feels him roll his eyes.

“Deposit the cart here,” says Kylo, motioning to the empty space by the pedestal. “You are to complete a portion of your duties by accompanying my apprentice, Rey, anywhere she may need to go, and you are to fetch her anything she may need.”

“Yes, sir,” says FN-2187, rod-straight and perfect.

Kylo steps past FN-2187, heading for the doorway—then, without a look over his shoulder, he says, “FN-2187 has brought kyber crystals on this cart. You will begin to work on constructing a lightsaber.” He leaves, then, bond silent as Rey’s jaw drops.

Not even a second later, Rey darts toward the cart. “Kyber crystals!” she cries, pulling apart the reinforced container. “My very own _lightsaber,_ Eight-Seven!”

But her friend is silent, says nothing as she pulls a handful of the crystals out, practicing her Force levitation on a few of them. He’s too silent, especially when she sees his bucket turned toward the pedestal by the cart. Finally, Rey puts the kyber crystals down and moves in front of the pedestal, folding her arms over her chest.

FN-2187’s helmet barely moves, and Rey says, “Eight-Seven!” He gives a start, removes his helmet guiltily when she tells him to, and she continues, “ _What_ in the galaxy could be wrong with you?”

“I don’t know,” he says, looking ashamed. Only with her does the mask of the perfect ‘Trooper vanish. It’s peculiar. “I’ve been feeling confused about a lot of things lately, but one of them is—well— _Lord Ren_.” He says the last part in a barely audible whisper, as if Kylo might be standing outside the room.

“Why?” Rey grins. “Is this like when I told you I was sketching pictures of him while he was away? Don’t worry. I won’t tell.”

“What? No! I have better taste than that,” says FN-2187, who looks so disgusted Rey has to laugh. This is one of the best days she’s had in a while—a friend to talk to while she makes her own lightsaber, a friend she’s found out will accompany her for a long time. He smiles, though, when Rey lets out a laugh. “You think that’s funny?”

“Of course not,” she says as serious as she can, killing another grin. “Okay, Eight-Seven, really, what’s confusing you?”

Thoughtful, he places his helmet on the floor beside him and watches her carefully. “Maybe,” he says, brows drawing into a frown, “the fact that your own Master is ordering me to act as your personal ‘Trooper. Me. _Me_.”

“You,” she parrots. “I get it. It _is_ weird, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t he know how you were—well.” His voice lowers again. “ _Reconditioned?”_

“Yeah,” she says.

“And—well—aren’t you supposed to be reconditioned?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem exactly the same, if not happier.”

Rey’s smile is plastered on her face, but it threatens to drop; she fixes herself into a neutral expression, steels her words. Reaches with a blind tendril toward Kylo, wherever he is. “I was reconditioned,” she says, and if she wants to keep Eight-Seven safe from being reconditioned _himself_ , she has to do this. “I know exactly what I’m doing and why I’m doing it.”

It seems to work. Though Kylo doesn’t respond, he immediately understands, and any avoidance he might have been doing vanishes as he envelops their bond with a warm shadow. Rey gathers herself and tells FN-2187, “I’m getting stronger so I can find Luke Skywalker with Lord Ren. Then I’ll find my family.”

There it is, the reason she’d fallen to reconditioning before in the first place: growing strong enough to find her family. But she’s a Kenobi. She learned that over a year ago, when she’d met her grandfather. And she learned that Kylo was Ben Solo, grandson of Darth Vader—pulled to the light. She learned her family was gone.

Technically, she can’t find them, but she told her grandfather’s Force ghost to leave so she can focus on being strong together with Kylo. And Obi-Wan promised to wait for her where her parents lived.

Lived.

Yet, for the time being, she can’t leave, can she? She doesn’t have a way out, anyway. Kylo won’t rest until he’s found Luke Skywalker, the mythical last Jedi. So Rey, for the time being, isn’t lying about this—she has to bide her time to gather her strength and, when Skywalker’s been found, she can head her own way.

 _Stop it,_ comes Kylo’s voice as she sits beside FN-2187 and levitates a kyber crystal toward her. _Don’t think about that,_ he says to her. _You’re not leaving._

 _No, I’m not,_ she agrees.

Seemingly satisfied, Kylo pulls away again, leaves her to focus on the crystals in front of her. FN-2187 is a perfect companion, happy to do as she says, to help her find the perfect materials to begin constructing her own lightsaber. It’ll take her time, she knows, but it’ll be worth it.

 

* * *

 

FN-2187 is with her whenever Kylo isn’t. That is to say, he’s with her seventy-five percent of the time, and Rey doesn’t remember a moment in her life when she’s been as content as she is now—but the lull in her chest begins to disappear as time wears on, reminding her about what beckons from beyond the Finalizer. Beyond the First Order.

In one of the rare moments she spends with Kylo—the time right before she heads into her adjoined room—he holds out an arm and gives her a look so piercing she has to switch her gaze. “Rey,” he says as she huffs and tries to sidestep past him into her room. “Rey! You’ve been distracted.”

“No, I haven’t. I’m just _reconditioned,_ obviously,” she says. “Can you move? I’m tired and I have to finally finish my ‘saber tomorrow. I need all the rest I can get.”

“You’re thinking too much about Luke Skywalker.” Kylo heeds no attention to her words, so she tries to push past him and he wraps one long arm around her shoulders until she’s practically breathing in the fabric of his tunic. “You’re not going into that room until you tell me why you’re thinking about _leaving_.”

The _problem_ that runs through Rey’s head—she doesn’t even care if he catches it or not—is that he’s asking her a very serious question, and yet this is the first time in a long time when he’s held her this close, paid her attention like she’s been used to receiving from him. She’s missed him a lot from these past few weeks when all her time has been taken up by the ‘saber and FN-2187.

For some reason, rather than push her away as Rey expects him to do, he only tightens his hold, bends his head to her ear. “Rey,” he says quietly, “I would never lie to you, and I expect the same from you.”

“I’m not lying,” she whispers back, frustrated. Can he let her go, already? Or can he make up his mind? Do _something_ other than hold her here as she thinks desperately about fuel pumps again? Kylo doesn’t let her go, though, and she has to resort to naming the latest class of fighter plane hyperdrives in mere parsecs as Kylo brings one hand up, locks the adjoining door to her room, and says again, “ _Rey._ ”

“What,” she grinds out, and his arm loosens around her, pulls at a bun and lifts her eyes to his own. His other hand trails down her arm until it falls to his side.

Kylo’s eyes drop from her own, seem to stop somewhere else on her face before he backs away completely, looking flushed and irritated. “Damn,” he mutters to himself, before shaking his head and casting another skeptical look on her. “I need to make sure you don’t leave.”

“Oh, come on. I’m not going anywhere.”

“But it’s in your head, all the time,” he insists. “You imagine it constantly. You dream about _Kenobi_ constantly. And Luke Skywalker—you—he—” Kylo has to take a deep breath, hold himself tall. “He’s not your ticket away from this place, Rey!”

“I’m not looking for a ticket!”

“But you _do_ want to leave,” says Kylo. “You need to stay. You can’t think about leaving. If you do, who will I. . . .”

The words linger, but Rey already has an answer for him. “I can’t leave,” she says, and Kylo looks possibly more unconvinced. “You have a lot left to teach me. And we’re supposed to find Luke Skywalker together.”

What happens _after_ Luke Skywalker remains unsaid.

“So . . . will you let me sleep, then?” Rey asks. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Sleep. Of course.” He lifts a hand, unlatches the door. “Fine. And since you still have a lot to learn, I’ll see what we need to work on.”

“Okay. Goodnight.”

He _hmms,_ turns away, and she enters her own small room, what used to be a study when they’d first arrived on the enormous ship.

 

* * *

 

Rey’s dreams, that night, proceed like any other: she sits on her island with her feet dug into the mud, staring into the cloudy grey sky above. Every once in a while, a droplet falls onto her hand, her cheek, maybe close to eye. This is her little haven, here. Greens and greys and blues. And if she sleeps long enough for the sky to go red, she’ll see Kylo, sometimes, who seems to dream on the same island at night.

Except, for some reason, the sky is barely tinted orange from beyond the clouds. Rey likes it. It soothes her a bit, makes her feel like Kylo’s close by. She wonders, perhaps, if their bond works in their dreams, if she can reach him. A second passes and she decides to give it a go: _Are you here?_

Muddled, again: _Yes._ Then, later and clearer— _Will you come?_

Rey stands, tries to brush off caked mud from her feet, but it only feels like it sticks even more. Giving up, she tries to follow where the Force grows beneath her toes, where it pulls her along through the path and into the woods. _Where are you?_

_Won’t you try to find me?_

The woods chirp and she has to swallow a grimace. _Come on, Kylo. Just tell me where you are._

Almost like the wind, the Force seems to push on her left ear, tugs, and then there’s a voice: _Left._

Rey turns, feels the trace of a hand along her back, and then the breeze rolls through the buns at the back of her ears again and brings along Kylo’s voice, low and thoughtful. _I think I’ve found our first lesson. Keep walking._

Wherever he is, it’s a dark airy place, a small cove to where Rey’s wandered several times before. Rey follows the wisps of his hand, traces into the mud that eventually fade into grass. The dream seems to bend when she sees Kylo standing with his back toward her, mask on, a palm raised flat against a tree. _You’re here,_ comes the murmur of his consciousness, unfiltered. Through his mask, he says, “Closer.”

“Take off the mask,” she says as she approaches, reaching for it—he says nothing when her hand feels along its edges, the visor of the mask hiding his eyes as he waits for Rey to unclasp his helmet.

She doesn’t. If he’s wearing it, there’s a reason, right? Rey lets her hand fall back to her side. Under her feet, the mud weighs on her bare skin more than ever, but standing in front of Kylo right now is enough to make her forget about it. It feels so far off from the rest of her time with him. So peculiar compared to when they’re awake, almost like a new galaxy here while they’re asleep, joined by their Force bond. “Are you real?” she asks softly. “I’m not here alone, am I?”

"I’m real,” Kylo says after a moment, helmet cocking to the side barely. “You want to become stronger. This is a good training ground for you.”

It’s _odd_ how calmer he is here, almost like the amount of Force that seeps through them is starting to cling at her pores, at his mind. He shares her thoughts about it, angling his head up to the light that peeks through the shade of the trees above. “I think this place is where the Force meets.”

“Where we meet,” she agrees, and she closes her eyes, breathes deep. It’s incredible—she feels both power and the sighs of an otherworldly thing pull at her fingertips. Rey wants to _do something._ “I feel like I could do anything here.”

Kylo doesn’t answer, but the push of his consciousness on hers lets her know he agrees, an uncharacteristically soft one that makes her wonder if this was what _Ben Solo_ was _._ At that, Kylo says, “Don’t think about him. Think about me.”

Rey’s eyes open; the light from above the trees reflects on his visor vividly, makes the mask seem gentler. Steeling herself—she doesn’t know if she could say it while they’re awake, from this place that seems to join them more than anything else—she breathes, “I always think about you, Kylo.”

“Do you?”

“You know I do.”

His shoulders tense. “I know. You’re so confident in it. I envy that.”

But all those times when Kylo was the pillar of confidence fill her head—Kylo draws away and doubt fills the air, making it quiver, and Rey does the one thing she’s comfortable with. Reaching up, she catches his long black collar and pulls his neck down, pressing the cool of his mask against her own forehead. The closer they are, it seems, the more she can communicate with him. As he had done to bring her back from the effects of reconditioning, Rey tries to emulate it here. Dances of fingertips on his skin that make her blood rush. A pull at his collar to show how her throat tightens when he plays with her hair.

“Why are you doing this?” he says, not pulling away. Instead, he seems to bend closer. Perhaps he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. Hands arching against the jaw of the mask, Rey doesn’t reply, instead imagines the coil of her stomach whenever he speaks. Like it’s doing now.

“Rey,” he continues weakly—not even the helmet can mask that, and her feet move, bare toes almost tripping over his clean boots as she pushes him against the tree. He stumbles, uncharacteristic from the garb he’s wearing as his cloak catches on the bark behind him and slips beneath her, helmet upped against her forehead still. “Rey,” he says again, the word breaking. “What are you—”

“Training,” she says. “Because I’d never be able to do this anywhere else, you know.”

“N-no,” comes the stammered word. “You aren’t. _Rey—”_

She’ll stop whenever he tells her to, but she’s so greedy, so fucking greedy—he senses this through the feelings she’s sending him of the way her legs clench and how her mind speeds into hyperdrive, and he says, “You’re serious?”

Lips on the forehead of his mask.

Something snaps in this place where they’re joined, and he careens upward, gloves hands on her triceps, holding her in place as she settles over his lap. And finally—when Rey moves away from his forehead, toward the crook of his neck to breathe him in (he’s been so far all the fucking time, she finally has him)—he lifts a hand and unclasps the helmet, tosses it to the side, and gives a shaking sigh.

She lifts her head, brushes wet hair from his sweating temple. “There you are.”

Kylo’s eyes are heady, darker and glazed, and he leans into her hand, barely shaking. His eyes are open the entire time. “My scavenger knows how to find things, does she not?”

“I haven’t been a scavenger for a long time.”

Somber and broken is what meets her eyes. “You’ve put me together, haven’t you?” he says, and he tilts further into her hand. “Feel it, Rey. What you’ve created out of me.”

Time is frozen in this land of trees and mud and grass, where Rey’s dirty toes curl and Kylo shifts against the tree; her fingers trail along his brows, touch the marks that line his cheek, exploring what she’s never had the chance to explore before. The entire time, he sighs, trembles, having clearly never been turned inside out like he is now, and the whimpers that escape him are fascinating little things that make her lean forward and press her lips to the thrumming beat in his neck.

Kylo’s eyes are closed now, arched against the tree, breathing heavily. “You know nothing about the rest of the galaxy,” he murmurs as her thumb trails his chin. “You’re young.”

Except she knows what _he_ knows, and that’s enough for now, isn’t it? “I know a lot, I think.” Rey’s thumb inches upward, just beneath his bottom lip. There’s a freckle there she likes a lot. “I know my grandfather watched over me and I know how to pilot planes. I know how long you spend thinking about the Light”—her thumb brushes over his lip and they open, letting out a quivering sigh—“and I know how you saved me from an eternity on Jakku.”

“You would have found your way off that planet.” Leathery gloves slip into the lowest bun at the back of her head and undoes it, spreads her hair thickly over one shoulder. “ _Rey_.”

Her name is long off Kylo’s reddened lips, and he’s a wounded creature beneath her who no longer knows right and wrong. Does _Rey_ know the difference between those two, herself? Does she need to? The Force doesn’t have to be right or wrong, it just _is_ —and that’s what her grandfather told her. So how can _this_ be wrong?

Kylo’s thinking the very same thing—his throat moves under her other hand as he swallows, watching her like he’s been blind his whole life. “You deserve more than this,” he says finally as she breathes along his lips, raking his hair behind his ears. “More than. . . .”

“I know what I want.”

“No one’s wanted _me_ , Rey.”

Vehement, she whispers, “ _I_ want you.”

Just a centimeter from her lips, Kylo exhales long and low. “I want. . . .”

“You can take whatever you want.”

“I can,” he concurs, “but never this. You’re giving me _this_. I. . . .”

The sunlight seems brighter now, dazing her for a moment and makes the world swirl.  The woods stop chirping. Her feet seem to clear themselves of mud, and the Force begins to pull her awake. Kylo ducks his head as her hands drop, missing her. And in a moment, the sun grows bright, reflects from his helmet on the ground, and blinds her vision—

—and she’s awake in her small room, hearing Kylo shift just outside the door in his own bed, and suddenly everything is wrong again.

 

* * *

 

FN-2187 is astounded at her new idea two weeks after she’s finished her lightsaber, two weeks after what happened while she and Kylo were asleep. Her friend’s jaw is wide open but his eyes are almost squinted shut. “Rey,” he says furiously, “the _last time_ you tried to pilot a plane, you were sent to _reconditioning._ ”

“I’ll get permission this time. It’s not difficult.”

“They won’t let you,” says the Stormtrooper, throwing his hands up in the air. “What brought this on all of a sudden? Last week you were perfectly happy here. You said you knew exactly what you were doing and why you were doing it. This doesn’t seem to fit with your _plan_ of staying here and getting stronger, you know! Are you trying to get us both killed? It seems like it’s working!”

“They won’t kill me. Or you.”

“I’m _expendable,_ Rey,” he says bitterly. “You might not be, but I am. They’re planning a raid soon. Next year, they said. We should be ready by then.” All of this is in a lower voice, as though afraid someone is listening in at this very moment. “And every Stormtrooper is expendable in raids.”

 _This_ fact sobers Rey and she lowers herself to the bench in the training room, setting her new ‘saber beside her. It’s a staff—she’s used to working with those—and it’s got a crystal in it that shines yellow, which is weird (and which Kylo told her not to reveal to others so far)—

“Rey,” says FN-2187, “what about your training? Lord Ren?”

“I don’t _know,_ ” she says, wiping a tired hand over her brow. “Maybe—maybe he can come with me.”

“You think _Ren_ is going to come with you like _that?_ ” FN-2187 snorts. “He’ll blow up the entire ship before he leaves.”

Rey can ask him, of course. But it’s been two weeks since they shared that place in their connection in their sleep, and since then every encounter has been filled with underlying tension, where both of them lean but neither of them step over the unspoken line. This line seems to be the place where they’d been last time—but she’s never seen him there since. Especially because neither of them, since then, have been sleeping very well.

“I can still ask,” she says firmly. “He might not like it, but he’ll listen. I hope.”

“Right,” says FN-2187. “I have to go to evaluations. Don’t do anything stupid without me, okay, Rey?”

Rey assures him that she won’t, she’s got better things to do for now, anyway. When Eight-Seven leaves, she picks up her lightsaber and stares at the ridges of the hilt, how they’re nothing like she’d imagined it’d be. Having a lightsaber is good, she reasons. Having a lightsaber no matter what is good.

The door to the room opens again and two of the Knights of Ren enter, casting her a glance through their helmets before they head towards the weapons bed. Taking it as her cue, she slips out, uneager to spend too much time with them. They’re not like Kylo. Ironically, Kylo’s the one pulled to the Light.

 _Because of me,_ she thinks, not sure if she should feel proud or terrified.

Rey decides to find another room to work in, so she spends time scouring for one that’s empty, but each time she pokes her head in, it’s always being used; finally, near the end of the hall (and after several ‘Troopers have sent glaringly hard looks her direction even with the buckets on their heads), she opens the last one and finds it, thankfully, empty.

The door shuts behind her and she drops her overtunic, pulls out her ‘saber-staff, and is about to ignite the plasma blades when she senses Kylo waiting in the back of her thoughts, as if hesitant. _What is it?_ she asks, lowering her arm and standing straight. _If you want to train with me, just come over._

 _I’m in a conference,_ he says. _They want you here._

Surprised, Rey tucks her ‘saber away and inclines her head to the door. _Who’s there?_

A moment passes by where nothing happens, but then Rey feels the dark end of her thoughts begin to lighten, and she realizes Kylo’s giving her open access to what and who he sees; Hux is sitting across from him, eyes locked onto someone at the end of the table, and there are several other lower-ranked generals sitting on the other side, lining the large conference room to the brim. She only recognizes Hux, Phasma, and poor Lieutenant Mitaka. And then the words begin to filter through:

_“—Skywalker. . . . Knights of Ren must be held accountable.”_

_“The Knights of Ren are separate from the First Order, operating only under the Supreme Leader’s orders,”_ says Hux; Rey is utterly bemused at his words. It’s rare he agrees with Kylo on a point. _“Of course,”_ he continues, giving a scathing look toward Kylo (and her), “ _Ren’s_ apprentice _has been through the Academy. She is as First Order as the rest of us.”_

 _I’ll show him how First Order I am,_ thinks Rey, immediately making her way to the door of the training room. Kylo says nothing, but she can still hear what they say; Hux continues, saying it’s imperative for her to act for the First Order, while Kylo’s mission is to find Skywalker himself with the Knight of Ren. _Are they saying I don’t have a right to come with you to find Luke Skywalker?_ she demands, outraged.

 _They want you to go through the Academy,_ he says. He’s bitter. Sour. _To graduate and work your way to becoming an officer._

 _No,_ and she sends as much an emphasis on the word as she can; on the metal desk, Kylo’s hand clenches into a tight fist.

 _You need to come with me,_ he sends quietly. He’s furious, now. _I won’t let them take you._ A beat. _Are you close? I’ll send someone to get you so they don’t think anything odd._

_Let them think—_

_No, Rey! I’m sending someone for you._ When he lifts a hand, points at Mitaka, and orders through his heavy mask to find her, Rey resigns herself to waiting at the end of the hallway, watching the stars from the tiny window outside. When Mitaka finds her (with oddly specific instructions from Kylo), he says, “Ren’s apprentice?”

“Call me Rey already,” she says hotly. “Let’s get this over with.”

 

* * *

 

The conference room is shock silent when she shows up. _Don’t pay them any attention,_ says Kylo, but she directs all of it to Hux when he finally inclines his head toward her in a small bow. “Lady Rey,” he says smoothly, and Rey almost loses all of her composure. “Take a seat. We were just discussing you.”

“My name is Rey,” she says, frigid. “And I will stand.”

Hux’s eyes narrow; Kylo’s helmet cocks to the side just barely.

“Your name is Rey,” murmurs Hux, as if she’s forced him to say it—but she hasn’t. He’s just playing along. “And you will stand. Of course.” His eyes don’t leave hers as she moves to stand behind Kylo, who says, _You don’t have to stand._

 _I’ll stand._ Rey’s fists are tight with adrenaline. Kylo’s, she sees, tighten further in response—he’s already on edge because of the meeting, but with her inclusion, he’s suddenly very angry. _I didn’t want you in these,_ he adds when Hux’s eyes break from Rey and slowly lower to the holo in front of him.

Rey doesn’t care. Let them think what they want; she won’t go back to the nightmare that was the Academy.

“Rey,” says Phasma from the far end of the conference table, the helmet making her voice as cool as ever, “you are to reenter the Academy with the next class under my supervision.”

“I’ll be searching for Luke Skywalker with Lord Ren,” says Rey.

“Lord Ren has the Knights of Ren to aid him on his search,” says an unidentified general—Rey thinks she’s seen him on the console port most often. “You have already been in the Academy and thus are obligated to follow orders from First Order officials.”

“But I am Lord Ren’s apprentice. And _his_ orders are what matter,” she says. “Ask the Supreme Leader yourself. I’ll be accompanying my master on his search for Luke Skywalker.”

“Rey,” says Kylo suddenly, his head barely inclined over his shoulder, “take a seat.” _That’s an order,_ he sends silently.

So she does; she sits in one of the empty seats beside him and, at Hux’s incredulous look at Kylo, scoots closer in spiteful glee.

“Rey will be coming with me to search for Luke Skywalker,” says Kylo. The room is as quiet as ever and Kylo’s heavy presence fills up every corner. “It is what I—and the Supreme Leader—planned.”

Hux’s jaw clenches, fingers tightening around his holopad. By the door, Lieutenant Mitaka says, “Lord Ren? If I may?”

“May _what_?”

Mitaka winces. “Ah. Well, the Supreme Leader has expressed wishes for—”

“ _What?"_

The room goes deathly quiet for the third time.

The word had not come from Kylo; it is Rey whose hand has landed on the surface of the table, whose eyes are wide with contempt. Kylo, whose face is hidden behind his mask, lays a hand on her knee, fingers tightening so much that she knows she’ll bruise, but it’s necessary, because otherwise she thinks she’ll unleash something terrible.

“The—Supreme Leader has approved our request to keep you in the Academy,” says Mitaka finally, swallowing.

“I’m not doing it.”

“You would be refusing Leader Snoke’s wishes,” says Hux, eyes flashing.

Rey opens her mouth, enraged (because Snoke’s wishes are certainly _not_ her own!), but Kylo says, “Your useless information will have to be confirmed with Lord Snoke. She will meet with the Supreme Leader on her own to discuss this.”

“It’s already been discussed, _Ren_ ,” says Hux.

“My mistake. She’ll meet with the Supreme Leader to _change_ this. Were we or were we not speaking about the search for Luke Skywalker?”

It becomes very rapidly clear that Kylo is absolutely terrifying to nearly all the people at the table. Only Phasma and Hux and a handful of others seem cool enough to answer Kylo’s questions. Time clocks by and Rey begins to feel a heavy dread settle in her stomach as she realizes what the First Order wants from her—even as one of the colonels report an update on Kylo’s shuttle, she hears none of it, instead struggling to keep herself thinking of a very rash, rash thing.

“ _Don’t do anything stupid without me,”_ FN-2187 had told her.

The meeting ends with everyone leaving the room except for Hux and Phasma, the former who sits and watches Rey and Kylo like a hawk, the latter who searches through her holopad. Finally, as Kylo cocks his head and Rey tries to keep herself from whacking Hux in the face with his own holo, Hux says, “I told you before, Ren. She is not _yours._ ”

“Nor is she yours or the First Order’s,” says Kylo, equally icy.

Hux gives a tight-lipped smile. “But she answers to the Supreme Leader over you. _You_ will not be able to change that.”

The world seems to freeze and Rey feels Kylo almost reply with heat, offended, and the Force almost sparks beneath the table; Rey says, “No, Lord Ren won’t be able to change that.”

 

* * *

 

“Dammit, Rey!” says Kylo furiously, shaking the second they get into his quarters. “ _What_ are you talking about? What are you thinking? You _will_ talk to Lord Snoke—you will come with me!”

“He’s not going to change his mind!”

“He will,” says Kylo, tossing his helmet to the side of the room with a clang. It rolls to its face and lies there at the corner, wobbling to a stop. “He _will!_ You will come with me—we will find him together—”

“And do _what?_ ” Rey yells back. “I already know why he’s said it. Luke Skywalker is a _Jedi._ We’re both tempted by the Light, Kylo! Snoke intends to keep me here until I _rot!_ ”

His breath escapes his nose at a rate she’s never seen before, and he says harshly, “I will _not_ lose you to them! I just got you back!”

“Then _help_ me,” she cries, and she drops her staff-‘saber to the floor, backs him against the bed until his knees buckle. “I need to leave. I need to get away from here. I need a ship!”

“You can’t—you can’t leave,” says Kylo as his back hits the bed. “Rey, what are you—”

“I need to leave. I won’t be able to come with you. You know that. _I_ know that.”

Standing in front of him, watching as his head finally straightens against the bed and his throat moves as he swallows, Rey has to hold back her hands, her legs, everything. His eyes move to stare at the ceiling. “Don’t leave,” he says, so quiet she almost has to have him repeat it.

And then, he sits up, eyes glazed, watching her—his hand extends, takes hold of her wrist, pulls her down beside him. A long leg throws over her waist and his forearms brace on either side of her head as he hovers over her, hair barely tickling her forehead.

“Don’t leave,” he says again. His eyes are somewhere on her face, not locking onto her rapidly softening eyes. “You can’t leave.” He shifts closer, ducks his head by her ear, hot breath making her chest hike.

This is against every unspoken line they’ve had, every boundary since that dream they’ve had in that joined area of the Force; his breath shudders against the skin of her jaw as her hand runs up his arm, lines down the side of his ribs; it settles on his waist, pulls him close and nudges him between her legs.

They stay like that for a very long time, with him shaking, shifting through his tunic, keeping himself from crushing the air out of her body. Every nerve is alight with _fire_ singing to the ends of her toes and lighting where Kylo’s lips stay just millimeters from her skin. When she crosses legs around his waist— _finally_ —he lets out a long sigh and says, out of place, “You need to do holofilms. . . .”

Of _all_ things he may’ve used to get her to stay, this is quite possibly the one she’s never thought he’d use. He lifts his head, stares her down with hooded eyes, and continues, “You would do well in them.”

It’s his way of saying he thinks she’s pretty. Beautiful, even.

She lets go of his waist and angles her head to the side, stares at the wall. Here she is, pressed into the dark sheets of Kylo’s mattress with his hips pressed into hers and his arousal keeping her from thinking clearly. She feels him like the difference between night and day, and yet it clouds her judgment and fills her up with energy unlike which she’s ever felt, and the boundary’s been crossed so severely she doesn’t think she’ll be able to withstand it anymore. “We should sleep,” she says instead as Kylo presses his nose into her cheek, moves in a slow dance against her through his tunic. “Ah. Kylo—”

“You’re right,” he says, muffled, voice cracking. He rolls off of her, face flushed scarlet and sweat beading along his temple. His hair splays over the sheets and nearly blends into it. “It will take me a moment. But you’re right.”

She stands, gathers herself and casts a glance back at him as his eyes shut—thoughts of training with Snoke runs through his head, presumably to distract himself. To remind himself of something. Without saying goodnight, Rey moves to her adjoined room and, for the second time, tries very hard not to think about what’s just happened.

 

* * *

 

Kylo doesn’t let her out of his sight after that.

It makes FN-2187 very anxious; he tells Rey that whenever Kylo gives them a rare moment alone, and Rey has to bite her tongue from revealing why. It won’t be so easy to simply tell Eight-Seven she’s thinking about _leaving._ Not when he’s been so adamant against it.

When FN-2187 _isn’t_ with her (and Kylo), Kylo, it seems, cannot keep himself away. A line has been tampered with and destroyed—and she thrives off the lingered touches, the too long glances, the way he swallows as he stares at her. It heightens their Force bond. She feels everything he does, the way his stomach clenches and his face grows flush whenever they’re on their own, training. It’s an awful game they play, toying with each other in this fashion, but to Rey it might be the only game she can play in a long while.

Except it really isn’t a game, not really—she has to leave and it feels as though she’s leaving half of herself behind.

At some point, when they’re training, he presses her into a corner and moves against her until she nearly passes out; another and he’s pinned her against a conference table after she’s spent an hour trying to be diplomatic with the other officials, ripping his mask off his face and nearly breaking his holopad; several more are when she shows up, tired and drained but excited from watching the pilots take their ships up, and she pulls him into a closet and grasps at his shoulders as he lays hands between her legs, through her breeches.

It’s _ridiculous_ , and rather funny to her, how this has developed. How she doesn’t feel right until she has his hips between her legs. It’s even _funnier_ , damn it, when he won’t fucking lay his lips on hers but he’ll rub through her clothing until she sees white. When, several years ago, she’s had awful longings and never would have imagined such a thing—and yet here he is, quivering with barely controlled pleasure as she palms him in a chair in the empty conference room, grins against the shell of his ear when he jerks upward several times a minute.

He’s also angrier, though, which is the price she pays. What comes with their actions is a wave of obsession, where Kylo hears nothing about her needing to _leave_ —and thoughts of her _abandonment_ of him plague the two of them while they’re separated. It isn’t until one of these moments when he’s away, pulled from her thoughts and shielded because she’s, once again, demanded that he help her leave—and FN-2187 shows up, distraught.

“Slip made another mistake today,” says Eight-Seven quietly when Rey offers an ear to listen. “I tried to cover for him again. The examiners weren’t happy.”

“You were trying to protect him,” says Rey, comprehending. “I know that feeling.”

FN-2187 meets her empathetic look with awe. “I’m not supposed to feel that way,” he says. “Is there something wrong with me?”

The months pass by and she grows older; the day when Kylo has to leave with his Knights to find Luke Skywalker approaches (there is intel of a man by the name of _Lor San Tekka_ , hidden on a planet that no one, yet, has information about), and the day when she most go back to the Academy by Snoke’s demand creeps up as well. With it is FN-2187 doubting himself more and more—and a horrible, horrible little thought grows larger. Every passing day feeds it like poison. And one day, when Eight-Seven returns from a horrible training exercise, Rey spits it out.

“Leave with me,” she says, and Eight-Seven’s eyes go round.

He has to ask her to repeat herself; when she does, he says, “Rey, I— _how?_ ”

“I’m going to find Luke Skywalker,” she says. “I _need_ to. I haven’t told anyone this, but—but if I _stay_ , I have to go back to the Academy again. Eight-Seven, I _can’t_. I can’t do it!”

“But Rey, I can’t just _leave_ ,” he says in a harsh whisper. “I was raised by the First Order. I’m—I’m going to be a real Stormtrooper _really soon._ And they’d—they’d kill me, they’d—”

“Come with me,” Rey interjects. “Please. Kylo won’t come. I need to leave, Eight-Seven, and you’re my only hope—we can leave together. We can get away from the First Order together.”

“And what will we do, Rey?”

“Find Luke Skywalker, stay far away from all of this—whatever you want to do, you can,” she says.  “But we can leave! I can convince Kylo, I’m certain of it.”

FN-2187 watches her for a very, very long time. Finally, he tells her, “He wouldn’t forgive you, you know. You told me he assigned me to you because he felt like I kept you _sane_ , whatever you called it, while he was gone. He’d kill me.”

“He wouldn’t,” she says firmly. “He’d have to go through me.”

FN-2187 has to lower his eyes at her blazing look, at the way she pulls him into a hug so tight he almost begins crying on her shoulder. “Are we doing this, Rey?” he asks when they pull apart. “Are you _sure?”_

“I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.”

She gives him a wet smile and, with another hug and a whispered thanks, promises bright things for their departure.

Keeping it from Kylo is another task altogether; she has never had such bad headaches in her life, so she is especially grateful when the coming two weeks are full of preparations and distractions for him. It gets easier as she practices. She wishes, desperately, that she doesn’t have to keep it from him—but she can’t let him know about it. Not yet.

And planning with FN-2187 goes quickly; he seems more and more eager about it as they learn what to do, though he seems deathly terrified of the consequences—but he is still strong to his word, stays as still as a rock as she sits with him and worries about their plan. But she thinks she has it. It’ll require convincing Kylo to allow her to leave. He won’t know about FN-2187—not one bit.

“Tomorrow,” FN-2187 says one evening, “I’ll meet you at the port. Stormtrooper uniform. We just got them permanently assigned. I’ll have one for you. We’ll get into the new TIE fighter. If you convince Lord Ren to help us use the TIE fighter without anyone noticing, we’ll be out of there, but if not, we’ll have to take it and just leave while making a big scene. Okay?”

“Right,” she says, nodding. “I can get him to do it.”

FN-2187 doesn’t ask how; she doesn’t quite know herself, either.

 

* * *

 

That night, when Rey reaches his chambers, she’s surprised to see him sitting on his bed in the dark, staring at something in his hands; the hilt of his cross-bladed lightsaber, which is scratched up from years of use. Rey lets the door slide shut behind her and steps toward him cautiously, taking care to announce her presence. _Kylo?_ she asks carefully, and when his head jerks, she holds out a hand. “Hi.”

He relaxes. “Rey,” he says. “Hux says you must report to Lord Snoke tomorrow by noon. About your placement in the Academy.” His lips twist. “He’s going to make sure you get the best education. You’d hate that, wouldn’t you?” Kylo’s eyes pierce her into her chest and her throat fills with a lump.

Rey’s hand drops to her side. “I love you,” she says at once.

Kylo’s eyes don’t move from hers; in fact, they only stare at her longer, and the corners of his mouth sink. “I know,” he says finally.

It is _absolutely_ the reply she knew she’d get, and it doesn’t faze her. “So is today your last day as my Master, then?”

“Yes. Tomorrow, you’ll be in the Academy.” His words are punctuated and heated. “And I will be leaving with the Knights.” _I couldn’t convince Lord Snoke about you,_ he says inwardly, because his lips can’t seem to form the words.

“But you haven’t finished teaching me everything.”

“I haven’t,” Kylo concurs.

“We still have time,” she insists. “Today. You can still teach me some things, you know. You still _have_ me.”

His eyes don’t leave hers for what seems like hours; his hands trace the edges of the hilt of his ‘saber, and the apple in his throat moves thickly as he contemplates her words. “Do I?” he says, and he sets the lightsaber beside him. “What more can I teach you in such little time, my scavenger?”

The name is her undoing, and he mimics her, grasps her as she falls into him, breathy and pained. Rough, like the way the bare stubble trails against her cheek when he tries to catch the corner of her lips in his teeth; smooth, like the way he _finally_ does, and it’s everything she could have ever wanted.

They spend a long time on each other’s lips. It calms down, slow and languid, filled with the soft sounds of sighs when Rey realizes biting on Kylo’s lower lip makes him breathe gently from his nose. So she does it often, grins when he has to break apart from her to readjust himself on the mattress, dragging her down with him. And when he’s settled, their mouths are together again, with presses of his tongue to her lips, with a dip into her mouth when he moves her beneath him, hissing when she tangles legs with his. When she echoes the action with his hair, with his impossibly smooth lips, her own chapped ones, and her peeking tongue.

He pulls away after his hand explores down to her belt; Rey hikes a leg around his waist again (she does this often, she knows it, but it fits so well) and he has to bury his head in her collarbone to muffle his groan. There he is, right where Rey needs him to be, through all his clothing and ready. And yet she can’t get enough of how his lips taste. To know that they were this close—and she’s only now been having them—

When she tilts her neck further to the side, hitches her hips to his own, Kylo whines—the smallest, weakest noise she’s ever heard, and she unlatches his belt slowly, distracted from the way he toys with soft groans against her shoulder. When the belt is done for, she pushes it aside, undoes the front of his tunic. And watching him sit up straight, watching him disrobe from it, it’s a gift.

Rey has a power over him. He does this for her. And she—he pushes her own half sash out of the way—she does this for _him_.

“Kylo, please,” she breathes out when his tunic is off and he’s only got his arm braces strapped along his arms and crossed over his chest, when his breeches strain against her with need. “Just—just do it.”

“One last lesson,” he says against her lips. “Is that what my scavenger wants?” When his hand sneaks down between them, presses against her core with two fingers through her clothes, she withholds a gasp and shuts her eyes—focuses the feeling to him, feel it, _feel it_ —he groans, has to do it _more_.

His hand leaves her wanting when he suddenly brings it up to her mouth, and though his glove is clean and she is clothed still, she catches a finger in her mouth and pulls, bites. Kylo’s eyes flash as she runs arms along his strapped shoulders, feels the fabric catch between her fingers. “I want to teach you,” he says. “I want to keep teaching you.” His hand pulls away from her mouth and immediately returns to the spot between them. When it does, she arches into him, and he manages to stutter, “I have s-so much left to teach you.”

She reaches down, herself, drags a long finger against the pressing bulge in his breeches. A guttural noise escapes his throat, wounded and raw. Rey has nothing to say to his words, only actions. Wet kisses are what he lays on her jaw as she undoes his breeches; ravenous, haunting lewd noises are what leaves his lips when she finally lets him free. He keens, a noise she’s never heard before as she takes him into her hand. Long and pulsing.

Needing and wanting, all for her.

And while she doesn’t _quite_ know what to do, she finds that it’s rather simple. Rey finds that circling her hand along the base of him as he pulls away, high-pitched sounds leaving him in gasps, makes him jerk into her hand until he has to join her hand with his gloved one to make her do it faster. A finger trails over the tip of him and he nearly shatters into her hand. It’s incredible how she has so much power in her hand. Incredible how much the length of his cock molds into her fingers, how he has to keep himself from driving his hips through her hand and into mattress.

Rolling off of her, he pulls her lips toward his own by the back of her head, and she has to hold herself up by a forearm as he digs his head into the bed, lifts his waist from the mattress with a wanting noise. With a hand still wrapped around him, she realizes what he wants.

She tears her lips from his, smooths soaking hair from his temples. Returns the hand to his cock and moves her lips against his ear. “Tell me what to do.”

He _does,_ and he does it well, with demands that make her coil and her thigh clench until she goes numb. He murmurs how to tighten a fist and press into him until he sees white; he chokes on his words when she sucks a kiss from the juncture of his neck and his jaw while pumping him in time with how her teeth close on the thrum of his pulse; he comes terribly hard on his dark breeches when she watches, with rapt attention, as his hand joins her once more and shows her just how to tug on the tip until he nearly shouts so loud she has to swallow his voice with heady lips. 

Rey lets his lips go with a soft noise, feels her hand fill with white noise when he lets go; blood rushes back into her fingers and she brings it up to behind his head, lifts him up to meet another slow kiss.

“One more” is what he says when he sits up, pulls her with him, and she pulls her own breeches off so quickly he can’t seem to hide the amused tilt of his mouth. Kylo is, somehow, ready for her again—starving for her so much that he helps her over his lap, legs thrown against the edge of the bed, her arms clutching at naked shoulder blades.

When he eases into her (because _fuck,_ he’s huge, what in the galaxy did he sell to be this large?) she has to push her tongue out from between her lips, shut her eyes. When her eyes open, Kylo’s staring straight at her tongue, and she wets her lips. Watches as his eyes switch from her mouth to her eyes in hunger.

Rey is the one who does this—the moving, the twirls that make Kylo’s eyes roll halfway into his head. He only holds her there, pushes her tunic away and plays with her breasts, small yet sensitive strokes with his tongue that make her clench. And when she runs hands through his hair, tugs at snarls that meet her fingers, he twitches inside her, alive and needing; as fast as she wants to go, she knows that when this is over, she’ll likely not have it again.

And so she takes her time. 

When the coil in her belly is _this close_ to undoing, she makes him feel it. He discovers, then, what it is like to feel heat from her behind her eyes, just as he shares that same sentiment with her. He leaves marks into her neck as she huffs, stretches to have all of him for when he spills. His hands trace circles into her sides as she presses the pads of her fingers into his arms.

With one trembling hand, Kylo pulls her buns apart, breathes the scent of her in, before he lays a long open kiss on her lips as she comes with a muffled cry; and he brings himself to his release when he lifts her up to her knees off of him before wrapping a large gloved hand around himself and pumping until he gives a close-eyed, open-mouthed gasp.

And all she can do is watch in wonder as he gathers his breath, white staining his black clothing. He leans back on his forearms, tilts his head back, shows a glistening line of his thick throat and the way his chest moves with his pants. Rey sits beside him unabashedly, legs bent over the edge of the bed, back meeting the sheets. When she does, she turns her cheek against the mattress and watches the way his jaw clenches and unclenches, how his eyes move rapidly behind his shut eyelids.

They remain like that for a very long while.

It isn't until Kylo's eyes open when Rey remembers what she has to ask of him. Her breath almost stops when she realizes it. How can she _possibly_ ask such a thing? After this? What sort of person is she?

"The ship will be ready for you tomorrow," comes Kylo's voice, almost detached from his exhausted face. "I'll have someone ready it for you. It will take convincing on my part, but the Force will make it easier."

"I . . . how long did you know?"

"It's not that easy to hide things over a connection like ours, Rey." He turns his head toward her. "I will take the blame for your actions. I will say you bested me. Tricked me. And Lord Snoke won't like it, but it will allow you to leave."

"Thank you."

He makes a hum of acknowledgement. "I will search for you, you know."

"Of course."

She falls asleep like that, with the soft thrum of a beating bond between them.

 

* * *

 

With Kylo's word, the ship is secured easily to leave from one of the smaller ports. Two guarding 'Troopers are dazedly accepting their request for the ship, and it seems like a miracle when FN-2187 and Rey clamber into the TIE-fighter. When she disengages the lock and pulls out of the port, no one stops her; not one soul in the dock makes a sound, and she takes the plane out as FN-2187 praises the galaxy for their luck. Just as she takes the TIE fighter off the radar with skills she never knew she'd need, she hears the deployment of other ships to call them back. Their luck, it seems, is just enough, and she engages the hyperdrive to who-knows-where; the ships behind them vanish and FN-2187 doesn't need to use his blaster.

 _Thank you,_ she sends to Kylo when she gets away, and Kylo doesn't reply, but instead wraps a broken tendril around her thoughts before disappearing. His shields are up again. He's meeting with Snoke; it's the only reason he would hide it.

"What did you do?" Eight-Seven inquires when they've been travelling for half an hour. "Y'know. To convince Lord Ren."

A long while passes. Rey's hands tighten along the control stick.

"Rey?"

"I told him I love him," she says.

FN-2187 is silent for a long minute. Then, when she thinks he's gotten over replying, he says, "Yeah, that would do it."

He asks her where they're headed; Rey doesn't know, but she thinks she'll start with a place of hot sand and wreckages of wars long past. FN-2187 is all too happy to accompany her as she leaves the world she's known for the past ten years behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LMAO. ONE MORE CHAPTER. BYE


	11. Year 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo is thirty. Rey is nineteen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for all the support!! I hope you guys like this last chapter. I thought I would have smut in here, but it didn’t move in that direction. Anyway, it’s here, and I hope you guys enjoy it!

“Load them onto the ship. And don’t  _drop_ them,” he says to the other Knights around him, one of whom seals the last shipment and, respectfully, sets it on the ramp. The others make follow suit, silently and dutifully placing their crates of weapons onto the ramp before pulling them on board. The Knights are all older, quieter as the Force crackles around the ship, ready to burst as he focuses on the mission. They’re perhaps twenty-eight, twenty-nine, all of them, whereas he’s just turned thirty and has the other six operating under his command. He’s put his focus in training his Knights in the past year—in searching for Force sensitive lifeforms around the galaxy. The other Knights, perhaps by Snoke’s order, perhaps by Kylo’s own, care enough for their lives to follow these orders. 

“Set a course for Jakku,” he says shortly as the ramp begins to lift and shut. “The _Finalizer_ will send Stormtroopers down with us.”

“Where on Jakku, Lord Ren?”

“Tuanul,” he says with disdain through his mask. “Luke Skywalker has . . . an _acquaintance_ in the village.”

“Is this about that map?”

“It is always about the map.” An effective reply to shut down any possible speculations, any lingering thoughts among the other Knights, who keep their helmets straight toward him, not looking at each other.

Always about the map, not about anything else. . . .

Kylo misses the slight tilt of the Knights’ helmets toward each other when he turns. Not a word is said about the young woman who, at this time last year, might have been on her way to becoming one of them had she not escaped last year.

The Knights do not know what Kylo knows about her, of course, not having the same connection to the young apprentice of Lord Ren that he himself has. Kylo knows too much about Rey. As she does about him. Any progress he’s made toward finding other Force users in the galaxy has been shut down by Rey—and likewise, any knowledge _she_ has about where she’s going, who she finds . . . Kylo knows about all of it.

It’s an unspoken agreement they have, coupled with nights where he sits in a room in the _Finalizer_ and tries very heavily not to think of her, because when he does (and he does quite often), the nights become heady and hot. Angry and laden with tension. Hatred for how he let her slip, for feeling this way, for his betrayal to Snoke . . . yet unregretful of all of it. He’d have chosen the same route if given the same choice again a year ago.

And now, in a smaller room aboard his own shuttle, he leans a cloaked arm against the wall and exhales, glaring at the way the cold light plays blurs into the durasteel. Ten years ago . . . looking on himself now, Kylo should have been ashamed. He was the man who had sworn fealty to the voice in his head. And what has he done? Allowed his apprentice, whom he taught himself to be by his side as they found Luke Skywalker, to leave him on his lonesome with a mere Stormtrooper.

He should regret it.

Kylo doesn’t regret it.

 _Are you there?_ he extends, straightening against the wall before moving toward the bench several feet away.

A moment passes, before the grinning reply comes: _No._

_Very funny._

She’s busy training with the Stormtrooper, FN-2187—her best friend, a constant in her world as Rey travels from system to system every other day. The only constant in her life besides “Eight-Seven” is Kylo himself. _What is it?_ she inquires after thoughts of the sparring session run through her head.

Kylo pauses, debating in telling her.

 _You don’t have to say it,_ she tells him, understanding, though hesitant. _As much as I’d like you to tell me . . . you don’t have to._

 _We’re arriving on Jakku tomorrow,_ he sends suddenly.

Silence as she parries a strike on her right before aggressively slamming her wooden training staff into FN-2187’s ribs; he curses and Rey calls out a quick apology before rearing on Kylo. _You’re_ what? she demands, and Kylo feels every muscle in her limbs ready to strike. The poor Stormtrooper.

_We’re arriving on Jakku—_

_Tomorrow, I heard you!_ Her voice in his head is a loud snarl. _Oh, you had a whole year to go to Jakku, but right when I leave, you decide to come! What sort of game are you playing?_

He tells her it’s not a _fucking game._ Kylo shouldn’t have told her. Damn it! _Would you rather I have I have shown up when Snoke was hell bent on revenge half a year ago? I can’t travel alone, you know that. All my Knights are with me and Hux has his Stormtroopers on their way to block off the planet._

Rey’s still furious, but calmer now, and she says tightly, _I could’ve handled them!_

 _You and an ex-Trooper who’s been branded a traitor since the minute you both left. I took the brunt of your betrayal,_ he spits over their connection. And what a brunt it was; he was unable to see straight for a week until he managed to acquire enough energy to piece himself back together. _You and him against the First Order. Tell me, Rey, do you want your escape to be worth nothing?_

Rey blocks another attack from FN-2187’s vibrosword. _So, what, am I supposed to leave before you get here?_

_That would be appreciated._

_Thanks for caring about my safety,_ she snaps.

Exasperated, he begins, _Rey—_

Before he can finish, FN-2187 yelps loudly as Rey—accidentally—whacks her staff a little too hard into his head. “Rey! I thought we were just testing out our blocks!”

“Sorry,” she says hastily, cringing hard enough that Kylo himself flinches on the bench, safe in his shuttle. _Fine,_ she sends. _I’ll leave before morning. But only for Eight-Seven!_

Kylo has to withhold a long sigh. At least she’s doing it because she knows that if FN-2187 . . . suffice it to say, he won’t be treated kindly, and loathe as Kylo is to admit it, FN-2187 is a good friend to Rey. Though Kylo knows for certain FN-2187 can handle himself; Rey, of course, knows it as well, but Snoke will be less forgiving of a simple Stormtrooper.

She withdraws from their connection, then, instead focusing on her training with FN-2187, so Kylo decides it’s best if he trains, himself. Trepidation is at his fingertips—he needs that damn map, but if he sits and thinks about it, he’ll probably end up souring the entire the shuttle.

 

* * *

 

Jakku arrives quickly into their field, half the planet under their desert star, the other blacked out in the dead of night. Tuanul is on the latter side, cloaked as it should be to properly hide the map Kylo knows is with Lor San Tekka. He issues orders for the Stormtroopers and for Captain Phasma to descend onto the planet in the dead of the night, far enough from Tuanul to be somewhat undetected.

His shuttle is ready for him when he stomps toward it, black tunic billowing around his legs as he leads a group of Stormtroopers behind him. Phasma’s ship is already long gone toward the planet, has left the _Finalizer_ the moment the order leaves his mouth. Kylo climbs in the shuttle, Stormtroopers lining the walls behind him, before the shuttle lifts off the platform and locks onto Jakku.

Kylo shuts his eyes behind his mask, tries to see through Rey’s eyes. She sends the inside of the ship to greet him. _You’re out?_ he asks, reassured by the way her hands move over the controls.

 _What does it look like?_ she sends back. Beside her is FN-2187, about to climb down low to work their defenses.

So Kylo pulls away, relieved that she’ll be out before they unknowingly reach her. His chest tightens as he thinks about what he’s missing—he can see her again, after a whole year! He can ask her to stay—but he throws the thought out as he remembers how difficult it was to get her away from the First Order in the first place. They have different goals. Sure, they both tie into Luke Skywalker, but—but—for different reasons.

Phasma’s voice feed through. “Sir, I will land far from the village to keep away from sight. We should be undetected.”

“By the time you’ll have rounded up the villagers, I will have my shuttle at the village,” he replies shortly. His stomach is doing horrible twists and something sits wrongly with him. It's almost as if he doesn't want to. Almost like he. . . .

“Of course, sir.” And she cuts out.

 

* * *

 

The moment they land at Tuanul and Kylo stomps out of his shuttle, Stormtroopers marching behind him in the dead of night, he quickly scans for any sign of Rey. He doesn’t see her, and she’s withdrawn from their connection, so he allows himself to focus on the old man held tightly by the wrists at the end of the ramp—Lor San Tekka, the fool, a man who knew him as a _child_ —Kylo’s fingers curl toward his ‘saber.

“Look at you,” he snarls through his mask, hoping to get some sort of reaction from the old man whose face betrayed nothing. Even the fucking light from the fires around the village didn’t flicker on his old face. “Look how _old_ you’ve become.”

“Something far worse has happened to you,” says the old man, with some horrible knowing in his eyes that makes Kylo have to take a moment to gather himself. Rey, during this, is oddly silent. He is darker, angrier, of course, but Rey is always present—without words—to somehow balance him out. (The moments when he meets with Snoke are some of the worst he’s ever experienced—pushing her out to keep her away from the pain nearly turns him into a different person.)

So instead, looking at this—this _Lor San Tekka,_ a man whom he barely remembers, Kylo says, “You have something I need. You know what I’ve come for.”

“I know where you come _from_ ,” says Lor San Tekka, maddeningly.

Kylo’s eyes narrow at him behind his mask. He reaches out to Rey subconsciously, but she’s still distant.

The old man elaborates further. “Before you called yourself ‘Kylo Ren’.”

 _So do I,_ he thinks viciously. Rey’s distance is becoming nauseating. Where is she? “The map to Skywalker,” he says, frigid. “We know you found it. And now you’re going to give it to the First Order.”

“The First Order rose from the Dark Side. _You_ did not.”

Kylo’s seeing red. He knows that all the Stormtroopers—and Phasma, behind him, and other officials—they all know he’s the _Jedi Killer,_ the one who betrayed Luke Skywalker as a boy. But it’s never spoken of. It _shouldn’t_ be spoken of, yet here it is, out in the open, and Lor San Tekka says it proudly, as if he’s happy they’ll be his final words. “I’ll show you the Dark Side,” he snarls as he approaches.

“You may try—but you cannot deny the truth that is your family,” says that horrible, horrible old man, and Kylo gives a sarcastic little huff in his head before chiming, “You’re so right!” and igniting his ‘saber—

His ‘saber stops in midair. A flash of blue signs from his right—in disbelief, he ignores his lightsaber and quickly halts the blast with his left hand and freezes the man who had done it—but his own right hand is unable to move, and he roars, “REY!”

She’s suddenly everywhere in his mind and right across the village, and beside her is FN-2187; the Stormtroopers start, about to lunge into action to both Rey and FN-2187, neither of whom have left Jakku at all. _You LIED to me!_ he shoots at her, appalled.

 _I’m sure you can handle it,_ she replies, raising a blaster up in the air and Kylo finds his arm able to move; when he senses Phasma move from behind him, he yells, “She’s _mine!_ ” and promptly sends Lor San Tekka flying out of the way. Stormtroopers immediately throw themselves into action and the village descends into mayhem.

FN-2187 yells something indistinguishable but Kylo doesn’t care. Lor San Tekka can be handing off the map to the Resistance, for all he knows, and still Kylo’s mind has tunneled onto Rey, who is _here,_ and alive, and running rampant across the village toward a ship that looks too small to hold more than two people—

—there is a _man_ Kylo’s never seen before standing beside that ship, unfamiliar to Kylo but not so unfamiliar to Rey and FN-2187.

“Eight-Seven!” Rey yells over her shoulder, and FN-2187 emerges from the mass of Stormtroopers, bloodied and exhausted. He calls back with a crack in his voice, and Kylo lifts his hand, almost stops him. Because if he has the traitor (he tries to ignore the fact that he _encouraged_ it) then she’ll come back with him. Even though she shouldn’t.

But his hand turns and aims toward the stranger by the ship. He doesn’t see FN-2187’s figure stiffen, doesn’t see the ex-‘Trooper’s hand rise with his, doesn’t notice until Rey is fighting off Stormtroopers left and right and Kylo’s own hand is frozen again, this time by FN-2187 himself.

“What is this?” he demands hoarsely through his mask. “What _is this?_ You—you—”

“Get out of here!” Rey shouts to FN-2187 and the stranger. “Go! GO!” She waves at them before rearing on more 'Troopers while Kylo's mind is racing in horror.

“Rey, no!” yells FN-2187, but the stranger is already pulling on his arm, yelling at FN-2187 that unless they don’t leave now, they’ll never be able to leave at all—a droid beeps beside him, warning them of the danger. Kylo wants it to shut up but he can’t move—he can’t _move,_ how has a ‘Trooper like FN-2187 been sensitive to the Force this whole time—?

“REY!” yells FN-2187 again, and then his hold on Kylo slips and Kylo freezes him; Stormtroopers rush forward, holding up their blasters and the stranger behind Kylo curses loudly, stumbling as FN-2187 remains frozen in place. Kylo does quick work in his head—the stranger is clearly important, though he doesn’t know how, but he suspects it has something to do with Lor San Tekka—

But Rey, _Rey,_ she jumps straight into the mass of Stormtroopers and yells, “GO!” and Kylo has to switch his hold to Rey, freezing her as her eyes lock onto his own hidden by the depths of his visor. And, immediately, he knows this is her intention. To get FN-2187 away. To be brought on Kylo's shuttle. To see him again . . . to _convince_ him of something. And FN-2187 scrambles, yells her name as the Stormtroopers take hold of her. Her eyes stare right at Kylo and she says, just barely,  _Got you._

He’s about to blast the stranger's ship in rage, the one waiting beyond a barricade, to keep them from leaving. But Rey sends him a thought of a chip. A map from Lor San Tekka. Collateral, something to convince him more than just having _her._ She knows how to work him, now, and he's completely alright with it, isn't he? As Stormtroopers raise their blasters to destroy the stranger’s engines, Kylo says, “I have what I need. Focus your blasts on the villagers!”

 _Kylo, don’t,_ says Rey, hardening. 

Kylo is still furious at her for being on Jakku when she shouldn’t have been—furious that she had bothered to ignore his worry. And though he'll listen later on, albeit angrily, he needs to show everyone else that he knows what he's doing. Right? He's never questioned himself as much as he has in the past few months, never thought more of finding Rey and _staying with her._ He shoves his barriers up and sees her physically flinch, though the Stormtroopers take it as a reaction to their violence.

The clang of Phasma’s armor reaches his ears as the Stormtroopers turn their weapons toward the villagers. “All of them, sir?”

“Kill them all,” he says, tonelessly.

Rey opens her mouth, aghast, before she shrieks, “STOP! I have the map! I have it! Don’t touch them!”

“Sir—?”

“ _Don’t!_ ” yells Rey, and she glares at Phasma right in the mask. “You will _not_ touch them!”

Phasma stiffens; Kylo feels the tug on his own mind, knows Rey is trying her all to sway him and his decision, and in a moment of fury, he bellows phenomenally through his own mask. His head aches, he’s horribly betrayed, but he wants nothing more than to do what Rey says.

“I leave this order to you,” he snarls to Phasma, kicking the sand beneath him as he rushes away; Phasma’s helmet cocks to the side as she contemplates it.

Kylo has no idea what her decision is by the time he gets to his shuttle. The Stormtroopers holding Rey drag her in behind him, dropping her unceremoniously on the floor, on her knees. “Get off!” she spits. “I know my way around, you dumb banthas.”

They don’t even wait for Kylo to say anything, instead leaping off her as she jumps to her feet and levels a finger at them. “Go,” she says. “I have a few choice words to say to _Lord Ren._ ”

“So do I, it happens,” he replies from behind her, cold. She only turns a hard eye at him over her shoulder as the Stormtroopers leave, but the second they’re isolated from the rest of the shuttle and the door slips shut—“You could have _left_ ,” he says to her harshly. “You could have been away from here! Do you know how much I had to give up to get you out? _Do you?_ ”

“Oh, no,” says Rey coolly. “I know perfectly well. But I can handle it!”

“Handle what? The entire First Order? Rey, you were supposed to get away from them!”

“From _you_ , you mean!”

Kylo slams his helmet down onto the table, lets the sound ring as he tries to settle himself. “Not from me. From Snoke, from how he’d use you.”

“Like he used you,” says Rey, quiet.

Kylo says nothing.

“I’m here now,” she says, her voice going soft. “I’m not able to leave. But I don’t want to unless you come with me.”

Silence, aside from the warped beeping outside the door, wraps around both of them.

“Kylo—”

“ _No,_ ” he says. “No, Rey! I thought you’d left! Gone somewhere the First Order couldn’t find you! Back to the safety of your _grandfather!_ ” Somewhere he's been thinking _horribly_ about seeking out and . . . and—

He's missed her, so much.

“I stayed because I need to get you away from them. And if that means I’m not closed off on some tiny little planet training with the Force Ghost of my grandfather, then that’s okay!” Rey inhales quickly, pushes some stray hairs from her forehead. “I’ve already been doing that for the last year. That’s why I left, Kylo, you know that. I found where my family had been. Trained with my grandfather with Eight-Seven beside me. Now I’m ready to find Luke Skywalker and to bring you back with me!”

There are too many questions rifting through his mind so he settles on the one that baffles him the most: “How is FN-2187 sensitive to the Force? And how did _I_ miss it?”

“I didn’t know, either. Master Kenobi figured it out,” she says, traces of a smile finally showing up on her lips. “But—but that’s neither here nor there. I have to get you away and I have to find Eight-Seven again—”

“No, _you_ need to get away,” Kylo retorts. “Rey! I gave up everything to get you out.”

“I know that!” Her lower lip juts out in frustration. Kylo’s eyes tear away, trying to convince himself he just wants her out before _he_ does something stupid.

“I know that,” she says again, quieter. “And I trust you because of it. Okay?”

Kylo’s brows draw together. He has no idea where she’s going with this, what she wants. But all at once she looks radiant and happy, and she holds a hand up to his cheek. He almost stumbles away from her before she taps one finger against the shell of his ear. “The map to Luke Skywalker. I’ll give it to you.”

“Wh—Rey?”

“And I’ll trust you to come with me. _Alone,_ ” she says. “Alone, and that you don’t go back to the First Order.”

“You’d trust Snoke’s apprentice? The Jedi Killer?” he says roughly, pulling away. Her words linger traitorously in his head. He has a chance start over—but how can he possibly—?

Rey frowns. She immediately follows him, laying the same hand against his cheek once more. “I trust the man who got me away from the First Order,” she says, “and found my family.” It takes those words for the idea to stay planted. It takes hours more for him to accept it. For him to leave with her, for good.

 

* * *

 

Hux’s voice shoots through the port once they reach the _Finalizer_ , slams through Rey’s head and rings around her ears. “ _REN!_ ” Following it is the quick, harsh clack of heels; Rey stifles apprehension deep into her toes and steels herself. Kylo doesn’t even bother turning around to acknowledge the general as they step off the ship. The Stormtroopers who hold Rey by her arms tighten their grips as she spots Hux marching over. Hux is a lovely, lovely shade of red, rivaling the shade of Kylo’s kyber crystal in his cross saber. It’s a very good look on him.

As he approaches and the Stormtroopers clear—except for the two holding onto Rey—Kylo outright ignores Hux. “Have the shuttle ready to leave in the next two hours,” says Kylo to one of the port workers. “No later.”

“REN!”

“I can hear you loud and clear, General Hux,” says Kylo—Rey feels his patience thin dangerously. (He never had much to begin with.)

“You will report to the Supreme Leader _at once_ with this—this—this traitor!” says Hux, cheeks hollowed in anger. “And—you must have her watched, and put into reconditioning, and—”

“Why, _General._ I’m a prisoner, not a soldier for reconditioning!” Rey interrupts, eyebrows shooting over her forehead. Her arms go numb as the ‘Troopers tighten their hold. Hux’s face wrinkles horribly at her.

“There’s no reason for her to see the Supreme Leader.” Kylo takes a looming step toward Hux, who only glares at him under his orange brows. “She has been questioned. I have the map. I am going to find the last jedi and she is coming with me as leverage. Understood?”

“Leverage,” repeats Hux.

“Did you not hear about the _other_ traitor, sensitive to the Force?” _Stay quiet, Rey,_ comes Kylo’s message to Rey.

Ruffled, Hux draws his head back. “Of course I have. That has nothing to do with—”

“Wherever she goes, he will follow,” continues Kylo. “And I will take both of them to the last jedi. All three of them at my disposal.”

Hux doesn’t waver from his spot, nor does he back down from Kylo’s dark visor. Rey can’t help but stare as Hux’s glower slowly shifts into the slightest smirk. “Ah,” says the general. “So you’ll need backup, then.”

“Are you _questioning_ me?”

“You’ve failed plenty before, Ren . . . only best to be careful.” Hux’s smirk disappears and he rolls his lips, eyebrows rising. “They’re here for you, of course.”

“You’re forgetting sometime important, General. You’re forgetting FN-2187,” says Kylo. “A traitor. Likely to turn other Stormtroopers to his side. A _vulnerability._ He knows the Force, and I can tell you that he knows it well. You send those Stormtroopers, you run the risk of losing an army.”

Hux’s lips slacken; his face pales and his jaw clenches. Furious eyes switch between Kylo and Rey. “You are making a mistake, _Ren,_ ” he whispers. “One you will pay for. I know what you’re doing.”

“I’m honored.” And with that, Kylo turns on his heel and stomps away. The ‘Troopers holding Rey look at each other before dragging her after Kylo, not without one long glower from Hux to Rey.

Rey smiles.

 

* * *

 

The ride in the shuttle is silent. There are no ‘Troopers. The shuttle is deserted; they’d left an hour early, which had been Rey’s plan. Kylo’s helmet is off and his hands shake.

“Kylo,” says Rey, from the other seat of the cockpit. “You’re doing the right thing.”

“It feels awful,” he says, staring at the control panel.

“It does feel awful,” Rey agrees, knowing the way his stomach is clenching, the way his fingers tremble with apprehension.

Kylo swallows and turns wide eyes on her, leaning close. “Rey, they can’t track us. If they do, he’ll kill me. He’ll kill you. Everyone.”

“They can’t track us, Kylo, I’ve completely disabled everything. By the way,” she says, trying to lighten the mood, “your shuttle is amazing. I forgot about it. It’s everything I could ever hope for.”

It works, a bit. Kylo shuts his eyes and leans back, exhaling heavily, nostrils flared. Rey keeps talking for a long time, out loud, small stories. Stories about FN-2187, about how she spent the past year traveling around the galaxy, trying to find the location of her family. “They died in a rebellion,” she says softly, “but they saved me by sending me to Jakku. Grandfather came with me. . . .”

Kylo finally speaks at this. “Their names?”

“Never asked,” says Rey. It takes a lot for her to keep from asking. “I don’t think I’m ready for it yet. Just having Grandfather right now is enough.”

Kylo is silent at this again. After another hour, she realizes he’s fallen asleep, chin pressed to his torso, breathing heavily.

Rey sets the shuttle to autopilot and watches him sleep.

 

* * *

 

They reach their destination in three more hours.

Eight-Seven waits for her in the grass, silently, with the stranger who had given him the lift; she doesn’t know his name, has only trusted him because of Lor San Tekka—whom her grandfather’s Force Ghost had said was trustworthy. So when she steps out of the dark shuttle and Kylo’s apprehension fills her head, the stranger's smile is very welcoming. He's sitting on a stump with his legs crossed in front of him, relaxed, but when she shows up he leaps to his feet.

“Rey,” says Eight-Seven with palpable relief. “Are you okay?”

“I’m alright,” she assures him. “I’m sorry for worrying you, but I told you I would be able to come back. I’m just happy _you_ got away.” Rey turns a smile to the stranger.  “Thank you. I’m Rey.”

“I know,” says the stranger, reaching a hand out. “I’m Poe, Poe Dameron.”

“He’s the Resistance’s best pilot,” Eight-Seven says. “He saved my life with the way he got us out of there.”

“It was nothing, Finn,” says Poe Dameron charmingly, and Rey takes a moment to go over what he says.

Then: “Finn?” she parrots.

“Oh. Yeah,” says Eight-Seven— _Finn._ “I guess I’m ‘Finn’ now.”

“No one’s name should be a number,” says Poe Dameron. “But don’t feel obligated to be Finn on my account. That won’t stop me from calling you that, though.”

“Finn,” Rey says again, and she likes it. She’ll miss Eight-Seven, but she likes Finn.

There’s a lapse in their conversation for a moment but the silence is filled after a second with a number of droid beeps—a small, round droid rolls out from behind Poe’s legs, curiously moving toward Rey and angling its large beady droid eye at her. “Brrrb!”

“Hello,” she says, before Poe Dameron interrupts, “Beebee-Ate, this is Rey. She’s important to us, buddy.” He kneels beside his droid, the BB-8 unit, and adds, “She’s very important to the Resistance.”

The droid chirps, bops at Poe’s leg. Then it hurls toward Rey, excited, happy—BB-8 asks a fury of questions, where she’s from, what the giant Scary Ship is for.

Poe stops smiling. Eight-Seven— _Finn_ —says, “Maybe you should get him. You have him, right?” And he sits back on the stump, watching the shuttle.

Rey nods, turning her head back to Kylo’s shuttle. He’s still in his shuttle, but he’s been listening to them. Waiting and making sure. _Am I supposed to come now?_ he asks her tightly _._

Before she can reply, he decides himself to come out and get it over with. From the shuttle ramp he appears around the corner and, Rey notes with amusement, tries his hardest to appear imposing. It doesn’t work without his helmet. Poe watches cautiously as Kylo approaches. Finn looks hesitant, but open. Rey appreciates that. He’s always been supportive of her.

When Kylo stops beside Rey, silent, Rey says, “This is Poe Dameron. And Eight-Seven. Er—Finn.”

After a very long pause, Kylo says, “Hello.”

Poe’s eyes are narrowed at Kylo, who looks heavily annoyed at having to be near a Resistance fighter pilot while having to be civil. Finn, who has been with Rey enough to trust her instincts, is a little more relaxed but seems to understand the apprehension that Poe is facing. “It’s okay,” says Finn. “Rey trusts him.”

“I know, but you can only be too careful around the First Order,” says Poe under his breath. “But if both of you are okay with him, then I will be, too.”

Poe stands up from the trunk, holds out a hand, and smiles a glimmering smile at Kylo. “Poe Dameron. Just want to say thanks for getting Rey and Finn out of the First Order.”

“I didn’t know you knew her.” His tone is clipped and he ignores any mention of Finn.

“Barely,” says Poe. “I’m told she speaks highly of you. If she and Finn can stand you, then I can do the same thing.”

Kylo’s lips twitch downward.

 _Awfully nice of him,_ comes Kylo’s voice in Rey’s head. He's very sour and uncomfortable, and his hands are thumping under his gloves. Rey extends a tendril of their bond out toward him, and he reaches to it like a lifeline. The world to him is over-saturated and terrifying, and his thoughts are running rampant. One difficult word and Kylo might go running. But he won't go anywhere. She knows he just has to have some time to think.

 _He’s apparently a nice guy,_ she replies. _But I only just met him, like you._

Poe holds out his hand and Kylo takes it. “So what’s the deal?” says Poe finally. “You gonna go back to the First Order? Give ‘em some battle plans? Stay here with us in the sun and live life out to the fullest?” And Poe promptly guffaws, clapping Kylo on the shoulder, and Kylo yelps.

“I—what?”

“I’m kidding,” says Poe. “I won’t let you go back to the First Order. I know who you are, know all about your rank in the First Order. Kylo Ren. You’re stuck with us now.”

Kylo looks highly uncomfortable. _Rey. Rey, I need time,_ he says, anxious. _Some space._

Rey only has time to understand what he’s saying before he turns away, breathing heavily, rushing back toward the shuttle. Poe, alarmed, makes to tear after him, but Rey says, “No!” at the same time as Finn, which cries, “Poe! Don’t!”

Poe stops incredulously. “What’s he doing?” He's not offended, though, but genuinely worried. Rey decides immediately she likes him, this Poe. He's level-headed, though pretty instinctive. Perhaps a bit like her. It's always nice to have someone who thinks just like she does. Calming him down should be fairly alright.

“It’ll take him a while to get used to this. He’ll come back. I promise,” says Rey. “I disabled all the communications and tracking on his ship because he was the one who told me to do it. He wants this.” She has to repeat it for Poe, who’s still pondering it. “He _wants_ this,” she says again.

“I believe you. Both of you,” says Poe. He runs a hand over his dark hair, sighing. “Alright. Rey, why don’t you tell me about yourself? I’m sure the Resistance would like to know about you and Finn.”

 

* * *

He can’t go back to the First Order. He can’t give Rey away to Snoke. He can’t let Hux win. He can’t lose Rey again, and he can’t keep ignoring the light that still glows deep over his bond with Rey, and in him. Kylo’s scared, though, that he’s still doing something wrong. That they can find him and Rey.

Snoke has always been able to find him. Kylo hasn’t been disconnected from him since he left with Rey to come here.

It takes Kylo hours to ease the headache in his head. His heart pumps blood through to his head and thumps deafeningly through his ears. But . . . he only has one way he can go now, which is to Rey. To Obi-Wan Kenobi. To the Resistance. And he’ll hate it. He’ll hate it, but Kylo has to be used to hating it by now.

He’s good at that. Right?

Kylo makes his way out of his shuttle, exhausted. Rey and the other two are nowhere in sight, but he can feel her nearby, calm and happy. Kylo can tell it’s a feeling she’s used to after experiencing the past year on her own with FN-2187.

 _Finn,_ he reminds himself. Not a meaningless Stormtrooper. Poe, not another idealistic member of the Resistance. Both here to help Rey, who is here to help him.

Him, Kylo, the Jedi-killer who turned his back on the light only to turn his back on the dark.

Kylo finds them sitting in a cove, Rey speaking gently to Poe as he and _Finn_ listen. Every once in a while, Finn jumps in, says something trivial, a fact that he knows that Rey might have forgotten. Rey always smiles at each one and says, “You’re right! Oh, I forgot all about that!” And she radiates happiness, and though not everything is over, everything is calm, for now.

Poe spots him by the entrance of the cover first. Finn sees him second, but says nothing to let Rey keep speaking. Finally, Rey, immersed in her words and memories, finishes and sits, marveling, until Poe stands and nods his head at Kylo.

“You ready?” says Poe.

Finn doesn’t stand, but he gives Kylo a light smile.

Rey turns her head over her shoulder and sees him, and for a moment Kylo sees himself through her eyes. Light spills from behind him, softens the harsh dark shadow at his feet. Illuminates his hair. A different picture than the harsh light from  Starkiller and the _Finalizer._

Rey squints at him and grins. When Kylo moves forward and sits beside her on the ground, Poe laughs heartily, offers to make some of his rations as a celebratory meal, and Finn offers to help, grinning just as widely. 

But until they do, they sit, and Rey keeps talking. In this moment, Luke Skywalker can wait. For the first time, the years hold still.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys thought I was just gonna let it go like that? There will be a sequel called Ten Weeks of Kylo, which will be a very long, long oneshot companion piece. It’s not up yet, but I didn’t want to hold off on this anymore. It’s been too long. I hope you guys enjoyed this, though. I remember starting this in the beginning of 2016. I’m happy so many of you stuck with me. Thank you so much!


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